On the Syntax and Semantics of the Bound Noun Constructions: With a Computational Implementation

On the Syntax and Semantics of the Bound Noun Constructions: With a Computational Implementation∗ Jong-Bok Kim and Jaehyung Yang Kyung Hee University, School of English, jongbok@khu.ac.kr and Kangnam University, School of Computer Engineering, jhyang@kangnam.ac.kr Abstract. The so-called Korean BNC (bound noun construction) displays complex syntactic, semantic, and constructional properties. This paper, couched upon a constraint-based ap- proach, two different syntactic structures for the construction with articulated lexical proper- ties for the BNs and relevant predicates. The paper reports an implementation of this analysis in the LKB (Linguistic Knowledge Building) system and shows us that this direction is robust enough to pare relevant sentences. Keywords: bound noun construction, complex predicate, implementation 1. Introduction Bound nouns (BN) exhibit various peculiar properties, not found in common nouns in the lan- guage. For example, unlike canonical nouns, bound nouns cannot occur independently: they obligatory select a complement (determiner or sentence). This is rather unusual when considering the language allows most of the arguments to be freely omitted with proper context: (1) a. *(i) kes this thing b. *(wuli-ka motu nollass-ten) kes we-NOM all surprise-MOD BN ‘the thing that we all surprised’ Bound nouns also place restrictions on the types of their complements. There are at least two different types of BNs with respect to their complements: BNs selecting only a dependent clause (Type I) and those selecting either a dependent clause or a determiner phrase (Type II) (cf. Cha 2001):1 (2) a. Type I: cheyk (‘pretense’), cwul (‘method’), li (‘reason’), cek (‘experience’), ppen (‘be- ing close to doing something’), ba (’way’), etc. b. Type II: swu (‘possibility), hwu (‘after’), cen (‘before’), etc For example, unlike Type II BN hwu, Type I BN li selects only a dependent sentence, as observed in the following contrast: (3) a. [John-i cam-ul ca-n]/ku hwu-ka mwusep-ta John-TOP sleep-ACC sleep-MOD/that BN-NOM not.exist-PAST-DECL ‘the time after John was sleeping/after the time’ ∗Copyright 2007 by Jong-Bok Kim and Jaehyung Yang 1The dependent clause, different from an independent sentence, has the head verb in a dependent verb form. The clause thus cannot be used as an independent sentence. See Kim (2004). 223 b. [John-i cam-ul ca-l]/*ku li-ka eps-ess-ta John-NOM sleep-ACC sleep-MOD/that BN-NOM not.exist-PAST-DECL ‘It is not possible that John was sleeping’ Bound nouns also place tight restrictions on the verb forms of their sentential complement. In the noun complement construction (NCC), the dependent clause places no strict constraints on the head verb’s VFORM value: (4) [John-i cam-ul ca-n/ca-ss-ta-nun] sasil John-TOP sleep-ACC sleep-PNE/sleep-PAST-DECL-PNE fact ‘the fact that John slept As in (4), the head verb of the dependent clause, functioning as the complement of the factive noun sasil ‘fact’, can be either in a short form ca-n or in a full form can-ss-ta-nun with the declarative ending. Meanwhile, in the BN construction, the head verb of the dependent clause cannot be in a full verb form: only a short form with restricted tense is allowed: (5) a. John-un cam-ul *ca-n-ta-nun/ca-l/*ca-n John-TOP sleep-ACC *sleep-PRES-DECL-PNE/sleep-FUT/*sleep-PRES swu-ka eps-ess-ta BN-NOM not.exist-PAST-DECL ‘John couldn’t sleep.’ b. John-un cam-ul *ca-n-ta-nun/*ca-l/ca-nun …

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