Two Types of Korean Light Verb Constructions in a Typed Feature Structure Grammar

In this paper, I present a lexical representation of the light verb ha 'do' used in two types of Korean light verb constructions (LVCs). These two types of the constructions have the typical theoretical and implementation problems as multiword expressions (MWEs): lexical proliferation of the possible light verb senses in the lexicon, potential overgeneration of illformed LVCs, and the semantic compositionality issue. Adopting and adapting the idea of qualia structure (Pustejovsky, 1991) into a typed-feature structure grammar (Copestake, 1993; Copestake, 2002; Sag et al., 2003), I suggest that some Korean common nouns have their associated predicate information in their lexical entries (e.g., the predicate meaning cook is included in the lexical entry of the common noun pap 'rice'). Thus such common nouns provide an appropriate predicate meaning to the light verb. The lexical constraints on the light verb and common nouns, and relevant phrase structure rules allow me to capture the generalizations and idiosyncrasies regarding LVCs in a systematic way.