Lexical Causatives in Korean

Abstract

Quite a few studies have already been made on causativization in Korean. But most of the studies are concerned with relating periphrastic causatives with lexical ones, pointing out their similarities and postulating a common deep structure. Consequently the differences between the lexical causatives and their simple noncausative counterpart are hardly touched upon. Herein lies a small justification for the existence of the present paper. The purpose of this paper is twofold: one is to show the differences between lexical causatives and their simple noncausative counterparts in terms of caseframe features, and another is to show that Korean lexical causatives are not so simple as Shibatani pictures. Shibatani (1973: 283) made the following observation with regard to Korean causativization: "the periphrastic causative often involves action on the part of the 'causea' (i.e. the patient that undergoes the change in the causative situation) while this is not generally the case with the lexical causative." To illustrate, in sentence (la) the periphrastic causative construction is used and the actant ai-eke is the causee who puts on clothes. In sentence (1b) the lexical causative verb is used and the actant ai-eke does not put on clothes.