한국어의 소단위어: 동사류 소단위어를 중심으로

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the morpho-syntactic nature of Korean particles/little words." We begin with providing a survey of some works on nominal and cross-categorial particles. We agree with the view that nominative/accusative case markers are phrasal affixes" and that postpositions and delimiters are clitics. Then, assuming that -si-, -ess-, keyss- and -ta are inflectional affixes, we focus on analyzing those verbal particles which occur after the mood marker: the quotative marker -ko and other post-verbal elements like -nta in khu-ta-nta. We argue that these elements should be analyzed as clitics, at least for one reading. According to our analysis, many closing" verbal particles are inflectional affixes. However, some closing ones are ambiguous between inflectional affixes and clitics. Some connecting" verbal particles are also ambiguous, but some others are analyzed as clitics-only elements.