A Study on the Light Verb Construction in English and Korean

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to analyze the light verb construction of Korean, based on the recent proposal of Hale and Keyser (1993a, 1993b, among others) regarding minimal X′-structure. This paper is primarily concerned with the grammatical difference found in the examples below: (1) a. *Chelswu-ka malwu-lul ti ha-n chengsoi -nom floor-acc do-rel cleaning 'lit: the cleaning that Chelswu did to the floor' b. Chelswu-ka Yenghi-wa ti ha-n hapseki -nom -with do-rel table-sharing 'lit: the table-sharing that Chelswu did with Yenghi' The relative clause (1a) is formed with the verb chengsohata 'to clean' and (1b) comes from hapsekhata 'to table-share', both of which consist of a verbal noun plus a verb hata 'to do'. Where does the difference come from? At first glance, it is obvious that chengsohata is a transitive verb while hapsekhata in an (unergative) intransitive verb. However, the distinction of transtivity itself cannot form any reason for the grammaticality difference shown in (1).