Some Syntactic Properties of Noun Phrase Complementation in Korean and Japanese

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to compare noun phrase sentential complements of Japanese and Korean involving the nominalizers koto and no in Japanese and kes, ki, and um iri Korean. In this paper the historical aspects of the relationship between the two complement systems will not be considered. The main interest of study will focus on the contrastive aspects of the two. complement systems. That is, in what respects Japanese and Korean Noun Phrase complements have similar or different syntactic properties. Here, no attempt will be made to explicate any new syntactic characteristics of noun phrase complements. Rather an attempt will be made to incorporate those syntactic facts noticed or explained already by other linguists and myself, especially Kuno (1973) , Nakau (1973) , Josephs ( 1976), Lee (1967), and Kim (1974), to compare the two complement systems.