Against Ambiguity Hypothesis on Number: Evidence from Reflexives

Abstract

This paper examines number marking patterns of Korean reflexives and their interpretations. Korean reflexives can be grouped into two categories based on whether they contain a pronoun; pronoun-containing reflexives and pronoun-lacking reflexives. Pronoun-containing reflexives such as ku-casin ‘3-self’ and ku-casin-tul ‘3-self-Pl’ require their antecedents to match their number features, on a par with English reflexives, e.g., himself/themselves. Interestingly, however, the pronoun-lacking reflexive caki(casin) ‘self(self)’, which appears to be singular in its form, can have either singular or plural nominals as its antecedents. What is more, caki(casin) exceptionally induces distributivity on a plural antecedent, as noted by Huang (2001) for the Chinese reflexive ziji ‘self’. Complicating the picture is another fact that plural marking on caki(casin), i.e., caki(casin)-tul ‘self(self)-Pl’, removes the exceptional distributivity inducing property of caki(casin). I show that the peculiar number marking patterns of the Korean reflexives serve as a testing ground for two opposing views on optional plural marking suggested in the literature. I claim that the number marking patterns of the Korean reflexives argue against what is often called Ambiguity Hypothesis but follow from what can be called Optional NumP Hypothesis couched within the number marking system developed by Kim (2005).