Morphological Passivization and the Change of Lexical-Semantic Structures in Korean

Morphological Passivization and the Change of Lexical-Semantic Structures in Korean Yoon-shin Kim • Department of Linguistics, Seoul National University San 56-1, Shinlim-dong, Kwanak-gu Seoul, Korea Yoonshin69@dreamwiz.com; yoonshin@snu.ac.kr Abstract The purpose of this paper is to analyze the lexical-semantic structure of morphologically derived passive verbs in Korean based on Pustejovsky (1995)'s Generative Lexicon Theory (GL) and to explain the change of the root verb's lexical-semantic structure by means of passivization. Passivization in this paper is defined as the unaccusaztivization. In Argument Structure of derived passive verbs, the agent argument is deleted and the theme argument is realized as a syntactic subject. As for Event Structure, derived passives express left-headed event (achievement), whereas their roots denote right-headed event (accomplishment). In Qualia Structure, passive verbs and root ones have the same Fomal Role, but in Agentive Role of passive verbs, an act weakens to a process. Both Formal and Agentive Roles have the same theme argument. 1� Introduction Many previous studies treated passivization as a part of syntactic phenomena. But in Korean, many passive verbs are morphologically derived from root stems by affixing '4-, -hi-, -1i-, -gi-' 1 , such as `yel-ta' (to open) – `yel-li-ta' (to be opened), or ' cap-ta' (to catch) – cap-hi-ta' (to be caught), and behave as independent lexical items. I call this process the morphological passivization. But passive verbs and their roots are very closely related to each other in their semantics and morphology. There are also argument changes and aspectual changes resulting form morphological In Korean, causative morphemes have the same forms as passive ones. Thus some passive verbs are similar to causative ones. But this paper will not mention about that similarity to just focus on derived passive. There is also another device for passivization, `-e cita' (to become). But this device is not morphological but syntactical. Therefore, this paper will not treat the syntactic passivization by `-e cita' (to become). 195 passivization. It is noticed that these changes have some tendency. Therefore, the argument realizations of the passive verbs can be predicted according to verbal forms. Passivization is usually treated as a syntactic process in many studies. But at least in Korean, a passive form of a verb is an independent word, but in English and many other European languages, a passive form is realized just as a past participle of a active verbs. Thus, passivization can be analyzed as a morphological process in some languages such as Korean, Japanese, while it is a syntactic process in other languages such as English. I also assume that morphologically derived passive verbs must be examined as lexical items and morphological passivization is related to their lexical-semantic structures. This paper proposes the lexical-semantic structures of the morphologically derived passive verbs in Korean, based on Pustejovsky (1995)'s Generative Lexicon Theory (GL). As well, the basic lexical-relationship between derived passive verbs and their roots will be suggested through observing and the change of the lexical-semantic structure resulting from passivization. In the following, I begin with the outline of the …

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