DP Internal Structure of Korean

Abstract

This work proposes a structural account of Korean determiner phrase (DP) under the assumption of Minimalist Program. The analysis is first motivated by the question of Whats in the DP? In order to offer an answer to this question, possible DP-internal elements are determined first; they are the head noun and pre/post-nominal modifiers. Examinations of these elements and the interactions among them reveal their positions in the hierarchy of DP structure. Four optional functional categories are found in between the two obligatory projections, NP and DP. Special attention is paid to, first, floating quantifier a popular topic among Korean and Japanese syntacticians, and second, the post-nominal quantifier ta. The data analysis reveals that the numeral phrase projects immediately above the noun phrase, and the classifier phrase takes the numeral phrase as its complement, which many researchers agree. Then, two subsequent quantifier phrases merge in, the higher one of which represents the quantifier ta. All of the functional categories above the NP project post-nominally. Finally, I argue that DP-layer is necessary as the locus of a number of features and the case-assignee.