긴 形과 짧은 形

Abstract

In recent generative grammar research, there has been a striking trend toward dealing with minor meaning differences between two syntactically related expressions in the light of universal semantic (e.g. Hoss 1978) or pragmatic (e.g. McCawlcy 1978) principles, While deriving thc two expressions from the same underlying structure. The present paper aims to apply Rosss universal semantic hypothesis (that a short statement is semantically more immediate than the corresponding long one) to some of the most controversial issues in Korean. Korean causatives may be treated à la Ross in that short forms consistently reflect proximate causation and long forms, mediate causation. However, again there are two readings, proximate and mediate, in a large set of short forms, which are regarded as linguisticalIy significant. This means that in Korean there are three, not two, clegrees along the scale of proximate and mediate causalÏon. Accordingly, Rosss proposal needs to be expanded or modifìed in order to accommodate Korean causatives. A further expansion of Rosss proposals may be able to show a parallel between Korean negation and causatives, in that short forms are always related to narrow scope, and long forms to both narrow and wide scope. Rosss proposal may also be modifìed so that certain honorifìc expressions can be handled in a parallel way, since degrees of solidarity have a close bearing on short-long distinctions.