Word Order and NP Structure in Korean: A Constraint Based Approach

Word Order and NP Structure in Korean: A Constraint Based Approach ⋆ Jong-Bok Kim a, Nam-Geun Lee b, and Yae-sheik Lee c aSchool of English, Kyung Hee University Seoul, 130-701, Korea jongbok@khu.ac.kr bDept. of English Education, Chosun University Kwangju, 501-759, Korea nglee@chosun.ac.kr cDept. of English Education, Kyungpook University Daegu, 702-701, Korea yaesheik@knu.ac.kr Abstract. The flexibility of Korean NP structures has been well-observed, but there have been few attempts to provide precise syntactic structures. This paper first reviews the basic distributional properties of Korean prenominal expressions as well as constraints in ordering, and then sketches a constraint-based, lexicalist analysis for Korean NP structures. Arguing for surface-based syntactic structures with more flexible subcategorization requirements, the paper shows that this lexicalist-based analysis can in a simple manner capture the flexible orderings of prenominal expressions as well as generate proper and precise NP structures, without resorting to functional projections. Keywords: NP structure, prenominal, determinant, ordering 1 Introduction It is well-known that prenominal expressions in Korean display a high flexibility in their distribu- tional possibilities. For example, the prenominal expression ‘honest’ can either precede or follow a determiner: (1) a. ku chakha-n haksayng ‘the honest student’ the honest-MOD student b. chakha-n ku haksayng ‘the honest student’ honest-MOD the student Such prenominal expressions can be largely classified into two: deterministic ones and phrasal- prenominal ones.1 The deterministic prenominals, which we call determinants here, roughly cor- respond to determiners in English (cf. Jackendoff 1977, Huddleston and Pullum 2002 for English). These lexical determinants can be classified as follows: (2) a. characteristic: say ‘new’, hun ‘old’, yes ‘old’, ttan ‘other’ ... b. indicative: i ‘this’, ku ‘the’, ce ‘that’,... ⋆ Many ideas given here are from Kim (2010). We thank three reviewers for the constructive comments and suggestions. 1 Hong (2010) classifies prenominal elements into two groups in accordance with their distributional possibilities: specifiers and modifiers. These two groups are similar to our classifications: lexical determinants and phrasal prenominals. Prenominal specifiers in Hong (2010) include most of the lexical determinants given in (2) whereas Hong’s modifiers consist of relative clauses and genitive NPs. Such classifications can be also found in traditional literature including Chang (1995), Sohn (1999), Lee and Ramsey (2000), and others. See Hong (2010) for further discussion. PACLIC 24 Proceedings 183 c. interrogative: ene ‘which’, mwusen ‘what’, etten ‘which’,... d. quantificational: motun ‘all’, myech ‘some’, yelye ‘several’,... e. numeral: han ‘one’, twu ‘two’, sey ‘three’,... Unlike these lexical determinants, there are also phrasal prenominal expressions like adjectival elements, relative clauses, and genitive-marked possessive NPs:2 (3) a. Adjectival: acwu [khu-ko] [pissa-n] [ppalka-n] chayk very big-and expensive-MOD red-MOD book ‘a very big and expensive read book’ b. Relative: [Mia-ka ilk-un] ku chayk Mia-NOM read-MOD the book ‘the book that Mia read’ c. Genitive: [Mia-uy] ku chayk Mia-GEN the book ‘Mia’s book’ The ordering of these phrasal prenominal elements is much more flexible than that of the lexical determinants. Consider some illustrative examples: (4) a. [Mia-ka ilk-un] [ku] [pissa-n] chayk Mia-NOM read-MOD the expensive book ‘the expensive book that …

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