Restructuring parameters and complex predicates--a transformational approach

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 1988.Bibliography: v.2, leaves 557-575.by Hyon Sook Choe.Ph.D

Linguistics

Contains table of contents for Section 4, an introduction and abstracts for nine dissertations

Some Distributional Differences Between Adjectives and Verbs in Korean: A reply to Yeo

In this paper, I discuss distributional differences between "adjectives" and "verbs" in Korean to show that Korean employs the category Adjective in addition to the category Verb. I first examine three distributional differences between "adjectives" and "verbs," which have been discussed as controversial in Yeo (2004). I then discuss that "adjectives" and "verbs" are in fact distributionally different, and that a suggestion that Korean does not employ the category Adjective may not be viable. During the discussion, I discuss two further distributional differences between adjectives and verbs and the nature of the distributional differences discussed here. Finally, I also discuss some controversial cases from the present perspective

On the Categorial Ambiguity of the Morpheme kes in Korean

In this paper, I discuss the ambiguous categorial status of the motpheme kes in Korean. The morpheme kes has been assumed to be a "dependent" or "defective" noun, because it cannot appear alone and its meaning is largely determined by discourse and/or syntactic contexts. Based on empirical data, I show that it may come either with a modifier or with a non-modifier, but exhibits different properties, depending on which it comes with: When it comes with a modifier, it has properties of a lexical N, but when it comes with a non-modifier, it does not have properties of a lexical category, but those of a functional category. As for the categorial status of the motpheme kes as a functional category, under the EP hypothesis in H S Choe (2006, 2007b), which suggests that a full realization of a nominal expression is a functional category projection above DP (called EP), I suggest that the morpheme kes is a realization of E, when it comes with a non-modifier. Under the present approach, I also attempt to characterize the nature of the syntactic and semantic dependency or defectiveness that the morpheme kes exlnbits, and to explain some descriptive facts related to noun phrases in Korean

'Restructuring' in Korean

The Italian 'restructuring' phenomenon discussed by Rizzi (1982) and others raises an important theoretical problem on the status of categories in configurational structure, which is our main concern in this paper, We have two goals: First, based on Korean data containing a certain class of auxiliary verbs which trigger 'restructuring' in Italian, we show that' restructuring' is universal and should be explained in terms of core grammar(UG). Second, we propose, under the principles-parameters teory of UG, that 'resturcturing' effects are derived from V-to-V transformation we call RR, which is characterized as follows(under an assumption that categories and terminal strings are independent entities so that rules can affect either categories or terminal st rings):(1) RR, which is triggered by a certain class of auxiliary predicates, affects categories. (2) V-to-V RR creats complex minimal/ maximal projections in a certain sense: Minimal or maximal projections within an RR domain do not constitute inherent barriers or induce the Minimality Condition