The Imperfective Puzzle in Korean

Much attention in recent Korean linguistics literature has been paid to the imperfective puzzle surrounding the periphrastic marker -ko iss-. This marker corresponds to English BE + -ing in a way but, unlike its English counterpart, -ko (KO) is a connective meaning „and‟, and iss(ISS) literally means „exist‟, though it is often glossed as BE or Copular in the literature. The imperfective puzzle usually refers to the phenomenon in which sentences containing KO ISS sentences are two-ways ambiguous when occurring with so-called „put on‟ type verbs (e.g., Kim 1986, Kim 1990, Lee 1991, Kim 1993, Ahn 1995, Son 2004, Lee 2008). For instance, (1) can be interpreted as describing the action of Yoona putting clothes on herself or the state of the clothes being on her. (Here and throughout, the action reading will be labeled a „progressive (P) state‟ reading and the state reading a „result (R) state‟ reading. Also, to stay neutral in citing examples from the existing literature, the morphemes participating in the formation of a periphrastic imperfective marker will not be glossed.)