소유격 표지 “의”의 분포와 본질

Abstract

Since Hong (1994) proposed the generalization that Korean case markers are optional only in the complement position, some counter-examples have been reported in which the so-called genitive case marker “uy”seems to be optional with possessor-like arguments and agent-like arguments in noun phrases. Further developing the argument of Bak,J.-S. (2003), we present in this paper some pieces of evidence that these counter-examples involve concrete or result nouns, which we claim take these types of arguments as complements, so that we can still maintain that Korean case markers are optional only in the complement position. However, we only use this generalization as a way to partially describe the distribution of “uy”; it is problematic in two respects: in this generalization “uy” is considered as a Case marker, and the fact that it appears obligatorily with adjunct noun phrases is not dealt with. We assume, following Hong (2010) and An (2012), that the so-called genitive case marker “uy” is not a case marker, but a modifier marker, because of the obligatory combination of “uy” and adjunct noun phrases, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, when noun phrases appear with “uy”they have the same distribution as relative clauses. We argue then that none of the noun phrases with “uy” is an argument, but that they are adjuncts, and that the only argument of a noun head is a noun phrase without the modifier marker “uy,” which occupies its complement position.