Mismatches in Korean Copula Constructions and Linearization Effects

One main complexity of the copula constructions concerns a mismatch between morphology and syntactic constituency: the copula seems to form a morphological unit with the immediately preceding element, whereas in terms of syntax the copula appears to take this as its syntactic complement. In capturing such mismatches, we show that the copula is treated as an independent verb at the level of tectogrammatical structure (or syntax tree), whereas as a bound morpheme at the level of phenogrammatical structure (or domain tree), in terms of Dowty 1992 (or Reape 1994). This paper, adopting the notion of DOMAIN in HPSG, shows that copula constructions are a subtype of compacting-constructions. These constructions compact the domain value of the copula and that of its preceding element together into one domain unit, eventually making it inert to syntactic phenomena such as scrambling, deletion and pro-form substitution. This construction-based approach provides a clean analysis for the formation of the copula construction and related phenomena. 1 Some Basic Properties The copula i-ta in Korean, semantically vacuous, behaves just like an adjective (or a stative verb) in that it inflects in the same ways as other adjectives do. For example, it does not host a present tense suffix (nun, nor can it host a negative marker mos 'not': (1) a. alumtap-(*nun)-ta beautiful-Pres-Decl b. *mos-alumtap-ta Neg-beautiful-Decl (2) a. haksayng i-(*nun)-ta student Cop-Pres-Decl b. *haksayng mos-i-ta student NEG-Cop-Decl One main complexity of the copula constructions concerns a mismatch between morphological and syntactic constituency: the copula seems to form a morphological unit with the preceding nominal element haksayng 'student' in (3), whereas in terms of syntax the copula appears to take as its syntactic complement this nominal and the preceding modifier chakha-n 'honest' in 3): (3) John-nun [chakha-n haksayng] i-ta. John-Top honest student Cop-Decl `John is a honest student.'