Dynamics of Information Packaging in Korean

Dynamics of Information Packaging in Korean Mi Kyung Kim Department of Liberal Education Taedok College, Taejon, Korea Email: meerkat@chollian.net ABSTRACT This paper discusses deletion and movement operations in Korean from the perspective of information packaging, and claims that each operation is a systematic process of information packaging to generate the most optimized information structure. This paper argues that there is neither free word order nor free deletion in Korean. This paper explicitly illustrates that old arguments cannot stand still in information structure, but must undergo some kind of structural changes or deletion. This paper proposes a constraint on information packaging that covers both operations and gives an explanation of underlying motivation for them. It is also suggested to decompose each component of information structure into a feature complex. 1. Introduction It is generally known that Korean is a highly context-dependent language, and said that any arguments recoverable from the context are freely dropped. This paper starts from a doubt on the second assumption, and attempts to characterize the deletion of arguments in Korean as a systematic process motivated and restricted by information packaging strategy in the sense of Vallduvi(1992) and Vallduvi & Engdahl(1996). The following examples illustrate diverse deletion of arguments in Korean: ( 1 ) A: nuku-ka Minsu-eykey chaek-ul who-nom Minsu-dat book-acc 'Who threw a book to Minsu?' B 1: Suni-ka� 0� 0 Suni-nom 'Suni threw it.' B2: Minsu-eykey-nun i�Suni-ka� Minsu-dat-top�ti Suni-nom 'As for Minsu, Suni threw it to him.' B3: chaek-un,� Suni-ka� 0� ti book-top Suni-nom 'As for a book, Suni threw it.' B4: # Suni-ka Minsu-eykey chaek-ul Suni-nom Minsu-dat� book-acc ' Suni threw a book to Minsu.' tenchi-ess-ni? throw-pst-qus tenchi-ess-e. throw-pst-dcl 0 tenchi-ess-e. throw-pst-dcl. tenchi-ess-e. throw-pst-dcl. tenchi-ess-e. throw-pst-dcl. The responses in (1B1)-(1B3) are felicitous, and this gives the superficial impression that deletion of old arguments is optional.' Close observation, however, makes us notice several important points. First, the answers in (1B1)-(1B3) denote slightly different interpretations, though they express the same propositional content. Secondly, the undeleted old arguments in (1B2) and (1 B3) undergo some kind of structural changes. That is, Minsu in (1B2) and chaek 'book' in (1 B3) are moved from their canonical position to the sentence initial position, and the topic marker nun is attached to them. Thirdly, the sentence (1B4) shows that the repetition of an old argument without any structural difference makes the answer unnatural. The examples in (1) imply that dynamic changes (including deletion) of old arguments are obligatory in Korean, and that these changes are closely related with some kind of functional structure which induces the different interpretations. The object of this paper is twofold. One is to show that deletion as well as movement of old arguments is a systematic process of information packaging to generate the most optimized information structure. This paper argues that there is neither free word order nor free deletion in Korean from the viewpoint of information packaging. The other is to suggest a constraint on information packaging which covers both deletion and movement operations. The …

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