A Comparative Study between English and Korean Resultative Constructions

Abstract

English resultative phrases have been known to appear in limited environments. Two prevailing approaches to capture such limited distribution have been the Affected Theme Restriction (cf. Goldberg 1995) and the Direct Object Restriction built upon the Unaccusative Hypothesis (cf. Simpson 1983). This paper challenges both of these, especially for the explanation of Korean resultative constructions. In particular, this paper, by adopting the basic idea of Weschler's 0997, 1998), shows that the distinction between raising and equi verbs is enough to predict (English as well as Korean) resultative constructions. This distinction, combined with a lexical rule that freely introduces a resultative phrase, predicts the differences between the two languages as well as the flexibility of Korean resultative constructions, for example, allowing the resultative phrase to predicate an agentive subject or an argument rather than theme or patient.