Light Verb Constructions and Structural Ambiguity

Previous analyses of (Korean) Light Verb Constructions (LVCs) have failed to provide objective criteria for defining LVCs. The verb hais inconsistently regarded as a Light Verb (LV) or as a "heavy verb" depending on its environment. In the face of this problem, I argue, firstly, that all ha-sentences should be analyzed as LVCs when the potential Verbal Noun (VN) has at least one of the verbally case-marked phrases as its argument. Secondly, LVCs (neither LVs nor VNs) are classified into two groups based on their structural differences. Thirdly, LVC sentences in general are ambiguous between the structures of these two groups. Many sentences, however, are disambiguated because the VN in each structure has its own special properties. In this approach, the differences of the behavior of the VN in (LVC) ha-sentences are attributed to their structural differences rather than to "spuriously" multiplied lexical items.