' 게 ' 의 통합적 분석 - 문법적 기능 , 통사 층위 , 형태론적 지위 -

Abstract

Current Korean grammar distinguishes at least 4 or 5 verbal ending `ge` according to its grammatical role, syntactic level and/or the lexical category of the root. For instance, when it is an obligatory constituent of matrix sentence and has no subcategories of its own, it is described as derivative suffix, and when it has complete subcategories of its own and is an adjunct as a whole, it is called subjunctive adverbial complementizer and so on and so forth. It is questionable that native speakers of the Korean language conceive so many `-ge`s as different from one another. Obviously it`s a big burden for both language learner and language user to distinguish so many `ge`s inspite of the same form and meaning of `ge`. It seems that the current diverse description of `ge` is due to the confusion of grammatical role and syntactic level of `ge`. And this kind of approach might have the risk of losing a linguistically significant generalization on the morpheme in point. This paper shows that apparently different `ge` constructions result from the application of a general Equi-NP deletion. For that purpose, this paper limited the range of data and clarified some relevant notions. The notions are grammatical role and syntactic level. Syntactic level means the projection of a lexical item. To reveal the nature of `ge` constituent requires to fix the constituency. So, this paper examined the obligatory `ge` constituent of a few verbs: `ha-(da)`, `doe-(da), `gool-(da)`, and `yeogi-(da). Through the discussion this paper showed that the `ge` construction of `ha-(da)`, which has been analysed as an embedded sentence, is actually a sequence of object and object complement clause. This paper presented several theoretical and empirical evidences supporting the analysis, and showed that the evidences applies to all the other obligatory `ge` constituents. This paper also examined optional `ge` constructions, especially those of which the root is adjective. The optional `ge` constituents have been treated as derived adverbs. This paper proved that these `ge` constructions can have subcategories of their own and thus should not be treated as derived adverbs any more. This paper drawed the generalization that all the `ge` constructions, whether obligatory or optional, are subject to the Equi-NP deletion and the wide variation of `ge` constructions comes from the application of the rule.