On the Referential Distinction of Anaphors

Abstract

This paper is a study of Korean reflexives and their reference. Section 2 has been focused on distinguishing anaphors into three types. We have postulated two types of N-features in the sense of Chomsky (1995), namely, phi-features and U-features. Anaphors with underspecified U-features are local rather than long-distance anaphors, whereas anaphors underspecified for phi-features are subject-oriented in our analysis. Anaphors which are underspecified for two kinds of features are both local and subject-oriented. Section 3 is concerned with the referential difference between caki and caki-casin. The difference between anaphors becomes sharper when a QP or a WH-word occurs as the antecedent. QPs or WH-words excludes the possibility of coreference. In section 4, other differences between anaphors on the basis of the notion of ‘guises’ have been discussed. It supports our hypothesis to the effect that local caki can induce coreference. On the other hand, the hypothesis that non-local caki and caki-casin can be construed as anaphoric reference indicates that non-local caki and caki-casin cannot evoke guises. Finally, we have assumed that if two anaphors act as the same reference and given a choice between them, the two anaphors are in competition and C-anaphors are preferred over B-anaphors.