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Incheol Choi and Stephen Wechsler: The Korean Dative
The Korean dative nominal suffix -eykey can alternate with or, in some dialects, stack under, the Nominative case marker -i/ka:
(1) Jane-eykey/ -i/ %-eykey-ka John-i coh-ta
Jane-DAT/ -NOM/ -DAT-NOM John-NOM likeable-DEC
'Jane likes John.'
Like many oblique case markers and adpositions, the Korean dative suffix
expresses a semantic relation between coarguments of the verb. Specifically,
Korean dative encodes a locative relation between Location and Theme, as well
as metaphorical extentions of this relation into other semantic fields,
e.g. the Experiencer-Theme relation expressed in (1); change of possession
verbs; etc. However, unlike oblique case markers, the Korean dative is not in
paradigmatic opposition to regular case (Nominative, Accusative, and Topic
case). We propose that dative and certain other oblique morphemes are
specified in the feature OBL, while true case morphemes encode the CASE
feature. Dative is not 'assigned' by the verb per se, but rather its
distribution is intrinsically determined by the interaction between the
semantic CONTENT values of the verb and the dative marker, together with the
rules of semantic composition.
Maintained by Stefan Müller
Created: November 10, 2003
Last modified: November 24, 2003
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