Light verb constructions have been treated as a relevant linguistic topic because they show unique characteristics that are not found in other verb constructions in Korean. Thus, previous studies are mainly focused on specific characteristics: (i) the relationship between light verbs and v and (ii) the affixation of accusative case particles. However, in this thesis, I examine more important issues related to light verb constructions in Korean: (i) how light verb constructions can works as predicates in clauses, (ii) the nature of the relationship between the complement and the light verb in light verb constructions, and (iii) where the complement and the light verb are present in the surface structure in Korean. Operating under the assumption that the light verb construction is a way of presenting a predicative type similar to lexical verbs or adjectives in Korean, I claim that (i) the lexical-semantic and syntactic information of all predicates, including light verb constructions, is determined in the “lexical conceptual structure” (e.g., Levin & Rappaport 1998), (ii) the conceptual categories in the lexical conceptual structure become the lexical items in the lexicon differently in light verb constructions than in lexical verb constructions, and (iii) the light verb construction is built by incorporation which is similar to semantic noun incorporation (e.g., Dayal 2010). In addition, in this thesis I will present new characteristics of light verb constructions in Korean: (i) the function of each component in the light verb construction such as the modifier and the modified item, (ii) the relationship between components in the light verb construction (i.e., s-selection), (iii) the existence of a functional projection between two components (i.e., Event Phrase), and (iv) the generation of the negation particle an ‘not’ under the head of vP.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/31684 |
| Date | 05 January 2012 |
| Creators | Bak, Jaehee |
| Contributors | Massam, Diane |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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