Korean Resultative Constructions

This paper aims to investigate the typology of resultative constructions (henceforth RC) in Korean, to provide their relevant constraints and finally to propose formal structures of RCs in a unified way. RCs refer to a formation that combines a simple sentence with a result phrase or an expression denoting the result of an action. For example, red in Lee painted the wall red, a result phrase can be paraphrased as ”Lee painted the wall ; and, as a result, the wall was red.” In other words, the sentence Lee painted the wall red holds the causal relation between Lee’s painting action and the result state ’the wall is red’. The traditional transformational approaches (Simpson, 1983, Carrier and Randall, 1992) assumed that the subject of an intransitive RC derives from the deep or underlying object position, supporting the Unaccusative Hypothesis by Perlmutter (1978). Despite the existence of RCs, however, it is not so easy to provide syntactic evidence for unaccusativity in such languages as Korean. We argue that RCs can be explained by type-specific but cross-linguistically plausible properties of the constructions and their relevant constraints by introducing the extended feature descriptions of RCs in connection with eventuality, i.e. telicity or delimitedness. The analysis is formulated, partially adopting Generative Lexicon Theory, in the framework of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG).