Kim Jong-Bok

We argue that uses of the Korean form kes in copular sentences, in which it appears to function sometimes as a nominalizer and sometimes as a marker of a cleft or pseudo-cleft construction. All of these fall under a simple analysis once the information-structure properties of copular clauses are taken into consideration: that they have predicative and equative uses (independently of kes). We propose that a kes-phrase may identify an all-new referent, or it may refer to a previously-established o

So-called multiple nominative constructions (MNCs) in Korean are quite theoretically as well as computationally puzzling. This paper shows that a grammar allowing the interaction of declarative constraints on types of signs - in particular, constructions (phrases and clauses) - can provide a robust and efficient way of encoding generalizations for two different MNCs. The feasibility of the grammar developed has been checked with its implementation into the LKB (Linguistic Knowledge Building) sys

The so-called serial verb construction (SVC) is a complex predicate structure consisting of two or more verbal heads but denotes one single event. This paper discusses the grammatical properties of Korean SVCs and provides a lexicalist, construction-based analysis couched in the typed-feature structure grammar, HPSG. In particular, we identify four different types of the SVCs in Korean, each of which has its own idiosyncrasies while sharing general properties with the others, and show that the a

English allows to extrapose a clausal element to the sentential position, leaving the expletive pronoun it. As such, English object extraposition appears to be a simple process, but a careful examination reveals much more complicated variations. In particular, we observe that there are cases where the expletive is obligatory, optional, and prohibited. The present analysis looks into the formal properties of English object extraposition and provides a way of capturing such variations relying on t

Kim, Jong-Bok. 2006. Minimal Recursion Semantics: An Application into Korean. The Linguistic Association of Korea Journal, 14(2), 59-85. Minimal recursion semantics (MRS) is a framework for semantics within HPSG that is considerably suitable for parsing and generation. This paper illustrates the application of MRS into Korean and see how the nonrecursive semantic representation offers us descriptively adequate semantic representations for the various phenomena (including scope ambiguities) in th

Fragment answers consist of a non-sentential XP but convey the same propositional content as fully sentential answers, inducing form-meaning mismatch. Similar to sluicing, fragments thus allow to unexpress clausal material, but the unexpressed, elided material needs to be recovered in a proper way. This paper discusses two different approaches for the analysis of fragments in Korean: ellipsis and direct interpretation approaches. Discussing several key empirical facts, the paper argues for a dir

한국어 ‘것’ 표현은 구어체 및 문어체에서 사용빈도 수가 아주 높은 표현 중의 하나이며, 그 사용 기능은 문맥에 많이 의존한다. 이러한 높은 문맥의존성은 ‘것’ 표현의 문법적 기능을 정확하게 기술하는 데 어려움을 가져왔다. 본 논문은 ‘것’ 표현이 통제된 환경에서 어떻게 사용되는지를 파악하기 위해, 정부 고위관료들의 연설문으로 말뭉치를 구축하였다. 이 말뭉치에서 539 경우의 ‘것’ 표현의 사용 기능을 파악하여 보았다. 연설문에서 사용된 ‘것’을 형태, 구문적으로 7유형의 주요구문으로 구분하고, 이들이 갖는 의미, 화용적 기능을 살펴본다.

Rather like English examples such as It is that he is a genius, Korean also has what has been called an "inferential cleft construction". This paper looks at the motivations of why speakers would introduce such a construction instead of using a simple declarative sentence, at what kind of semantic and pragmatic relations are evoked in the construction, and at grammatical properties of the construction of interest. In particular, the paper shows that unlike the English counterpart, the Korean inf

The expression 'kes', traditionally taken to be a bound noun, is one of the most frequently used words in the Korean language. This paper reports the results of a corpus search for the properties of kes. The corpora we used include Sejong, drama scripts, and editorials. Based on the corpus search, we classify `'kes' into 16 types based on the formal properties of the expression it combines with. We then describe the grammatical properties of each type in detail.

English employs two different types of free relatives: standard and transparent. Of these two types, transparent free relatives (TFRs) displaying intriguing syntactic and semantic properties. In particular, transparent free relatives (TFRs) are peculiar in the sense that the predicative expression within the relative clause functions as the head of the clause with respect to syntactic as well as semantic properties. In this paper, we provide a non-movement analysis of TFRs that places an emphasi

Kim, Jong-Bok. 2011. Ambiguities in the Korean -KO ISSTA Imperfective Construction. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 36-4, 863-885. Of the imperfective constructions in Korean, the -KO ISSTA construction is used to represent a progressive state, but the complexities arise from limited cases where the construction induces a resultant state reading. In this paper, we suggest that licensing conditions for the progressive and resultant state reading of the construction are closely related to interacti

Comparatives in many languages are canonically classified into phrasal and clausal types, but each language employs its own morphological and syntactic ways to express these. Even though Korean also appears to have both phrasal and clausal types, there are empirical reasons to doubt this dual classification, for this language. This paper raises two basic questions. First, should we treat phrasal comparatives and clausal comparatives in a uniform way as suggested for English in previous literatur

The Korean sluicing construction has recently been a main topic of research on the mismatch between form and meaning, in the sense that the wh-remnant phrase is interpreted as an interrogative phrase. The construction also shares some properties with pseudocleft as well as copula constructions, but at the same time bears distinctive properties from these two. This paper argues that the idiosyncrasies of the construction make it implausible to derive sluicing from any of the two and further shows

The English apposition construction is a phenomenon where two equivalent expressions (anchor and appositive) are adjacent to each other. The construction, whose grammatical relation is different from typical complementation or modification, displays quite intriguing syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic characteristics. Syntactically, the construction is analogous to coordination, but semantically it behaves like a subordination, evoking a propositional meaning. This propositional meaning, incongru