Using the data-based methods of language research, this article addresses whether the seltukha-constructions (persuade-constructions) in Korean indeed undergo a control phenomenon as generally assumed and argued in the literature. As is well known, there are two essential properties of controls across languages; (i) the controllee should be co-indexed with another element in the sentence and (ii) the controllee should be silent. Focusing on these two properties, the present study provides multi-pronged data taken from corpus exploration, context-sensitive survey, and language experiment. The empirical investigation casts a doubt on the control analysis of seltukha-constructions; in particular, it is borne out that the embedded subject (controllee) of the seltukha-constructions can appear explicitly, and the embedded subject - whether it be silent or not - is not necessarily required to be co-indexed with another element in the sentence. These lead us to the conclusion that the seltukha-constructions can be accounted for by means of a pro-drop rather than a control. One remaining issue in the analysis is such that the seltukha-constructions may sound awkward if the two NPs (matrix object and embedded subject) refer to the same individual and they appear simultaneously. To account for the awkwardness, we propose the Anti-redundancy Hypothesis; i.e., two NPs referring to the same entity or having the same form tend not to appear right next to each other. The current experiment further demonstrates that the hypothesis works as a general tendency rather than a stipulation about seltukha-constructions. Building upon the empirical data, we propose that the theory of controls in Korean (and hopefully other languages) should be reexamined from the bottom up. (Jeonju University · Korea University)

The main purpose of this article is to bring to light the common behavior of the so-called ‘/s/-irregular’ and ‘/h/-final’ stems in Korean, focusing on the similarly opaque phonological behavior of those stems when they encounter vowel-initial suffixes. It is proposed that their phonological similarity should be due to the lack of place feature in their input specifications of the stem-final consonants. The proposal follows from the discussion that combining the notion of Richness of the Base with Lexicon Optimization in optimality-theoretic framework, language learners should consult surface alternations and choose input forms that map onto outputs in the least offensive way with respect to the grammar of ranked constraints. Adopting placeless specifications as their input for both /s/-irregular and /h/-final stems, their apparent opaque alternations are adequately dealt with employing independently motivated universal constraints. The irregular status of /s/-irregular stems in Korean is still maintained but the source of their peculiar behavior turns out to be the lack of place feature just like /h/. Under the proposed ranking of constraints, it is also best explained that the stem-final /s/ in /s/-irregular stems gets their empty place node filled through the help of spreading from the following obstruent while that in /s/-regular stems is simply brought into the purview of place assimilation. I conclude that all relevant cases of /s/- and /h/-final stems can be dealt with successfully in a framework that has recourse to input specifications. (Sookmyung Women’s University)

The relationship between second language (L2) vowel production as a function of L2 experience and its perceptual judgments by native listeners of the language was investigated to determine whether the production improvement in the specific acoustics of L2 vowels give rise to higher judgement accuracy. A total of 20 Mandarin Chinese differing in the L2 experience (6 months vs. 2 years) were compared to ten native Korean speakers in their production of seven Korean vowels. The vowel production was used for an identification test by 23 native Korean speaking listeners to further verify the effects of L2 experience on the native Korean listeners’ judgments of Chinese speakers’ vowel production. For the analyses, F1 and F2 values of the initial vowels were measured and normalized across the three groups. The production results showed that the Korean mid vowels /e/ and /Λ/ were produced in a more native-like manner with increased L2 experience. As for the perception results, Chinese speakers’ non-native-like production of Korean vowels /e/ and /Щ/ showed high judgement accuracy, whereas more native-like vowels /u/ and /Λ/ displayed significantly lower accuracy. Overall, the acoustic distinctiveness, rather than native-likeness, of the L2 vowel categories was shown to yield higher accuracy for the perceptual judgments by native listeners. (Konkuk University)

It has been observed that a subset of dative verbs that express caused possession such as cwu- ‘give’, ceykongha- ‘offer’ and swuyeha- ‘award’ allow both dative and accusative case on their recipient arguments. These verbs contrast with caused motion verbs such as verbs of sending and throwing, which allow their recipient argument to be realized only with dative case or other oblique postpositions. This paper presents a novel, probabilistic account of the morphosyntactic expression of recipients of Korean dative verbs that can explain two types of variation that remain unexplained by previous approaches to dative verbs: speaker variation and grammatical gradience in the realization of recipients of dative verbs. It is shown that these problems can be accounted for in a unified way in terms of the relative ranking of and the distance between two conflicting constraints in Stochastic Optimality Theory (Boersma and Hayes 2001): a FAITH(REC) constraint requiring faithful expression of the recipient role (Bresnan and Nikitina 2009) and a RECIPIENT/ DIRECTCASE(REC/DC) constraint enforcing direct case more strongly on a semantically stronger type of recipients, i.e., a recipient entailed to possess a theme. This result provides new evidence for probabilistic approaches to argument realization where probabilistic constraints that relate an argument’s semantic prominence and a morphosyntactic prominence contrast (direct vs. oblique marking) play a crucial role in argument marking. (Sungkyunkwan University)

Al Khalaf, Eman. 2018. Remarks on the syntax and semantics of so-called comitative coordination. Linguistic Research 35(2), 253-273. Natural languages...