Seminario de Lingüística Teórica LyCC: "Gradable Predicates and Directed Motion Constructions: A View From Korean Auxiliary -eci"

Por Dongsik Lim (ILLA, CCHS-CSIC)

Sala Caro Baroja 1D

In this presentation I discuss the syntactic and semantic characteristics of Korean aspectual auxiliary -eci ‘become’. I begin with the cases where -eci combines with gradable adjectives (as in 1), and propose that, following Zubizarreta and Oh (2007), -eci is a spell-out of the verbal head v of the directed motion construction, which takes a gradable adjective as its path argument. Furthermore, I also propose that when v is spelled-out as -eci, this path argument is delimited by a comparative phrase (hereafter CompP).
This proposal will be supported by several pieces of evidence, including the similarities and differences between -eci deadjectival inchoatives and other directed motion constructions in Korean headed by ka-/o- ‘go/come’, the comparative interpretation of -eci inchoatives, their compatibility with measure phrases, and their variable telicity. Next, I discuss the cases where -eci can combine with (apparent) non-gradable predicates, such as psychological predicates (where -eci combines with double nominative construction, as in 2) and some transitive verbs (where -eci behaves like passivizer, as in 3).
Here I argue that my initial analysis of -eci with gradable adjectives can be extended to these cases. I will support this claim by showing that i) psychological predicates in Korean also show similarities to gradable predicates, and ii) the class of verbs compatible with -eci is semantically limited to those whose meaning is related to directed motion. In conclusion, I discuss the theoretical implications of this proposal, especially focusing on the crosslinguistic variations of directed motion constructions.

Organiza: Grupo de Investigación ‘Lingüística y Ciencia Cognitiva’. Línea Cambio, variación y cognición en el lenguaje