Speaker: Eunsun Jou (MIT)
Title: Case marking on Korean nominal adverbials correlates with Subject Position
Time: Tuesday, May 2nd, 1pm – 2pm
Location: 32-D461
Abstract: Korean structural Case markers demonstrate a wide range of non-canonical appearances. Nominal adverbials, classifiers, and indirect objects of ditranstive constructions can optionally appear with accusative Case marking. In this talk I focus on nominal adverbials, which express either the duration of an event or the number of times an event has occurred repeatedly.
While case-marked adverbials have been studied for many languages, including Finnish, Russian, and German, the Korean pattern is especially interesting because unlike the aforementioned languages, Korean shows multiple Case options for the adverbial in passive/unaccusative constructions. The adverbial can either appear with accusative or nominative Case marking.
Building on earlier work by Maling, Jun, and Kim (2001), I argue that the two Case possibilities correlate with movement of the subject out of VoiceP — presumably to Spec, TP. When the subject moves to Spec, TP, the adverbial is marked accusative. When the subject remains within Spec, VoiceP, the adverbial is marked nominative. I provide new evidence in support of this argument from predicate fronting, specificity of the subject, and Negative Concord Item intervention effects.