The Structure of Long Form Negation and Argument Composition

Abstract

There have been two main views of the structure of Korean Long Form negation: VP complement analysis and verb-complex analysis. This paper argues for the latter structure, based on various syntactic constituent tests such as adverb intervention, rightward movement construction, coordination, ellipsis, topicalization, clefting, and scrambling. These syntactic tests clearly indicate the negative auxiliary verb. By treating the two verbs as a syntactic verb-complex, we can avoid additional devices in differentiating the behavior of the negative auxiliary construction from true VP-complement selecting verbs (e.g., equi verbs like sultekha-ta 'persuade'). The other aspect of this paper deals with is how the relevant information from the parts of such a verb complex is combined in whole. For this purpose, the paper adopts the mechanism of argument composition that allows the negative auxiliary to select as its complement a verbal element (main verb) as well as the complement(s) that this verb selects. This system provides an explicit way of combining the relevant information of each part of the verb complex in the whole. The present verb-complex analysis with the mechanism of argument composition, armed with the precise lexical information, allows us to have a streamlined way of analyzing phenomena such as aspect selection, NPI licensing, and case marking.