Change of State Verb and Syntax of Serial Verb Constructions in Korean: An HPSG Account

Abstract

The simple, canonical form of SVCs has been much studied (e.g. Lee, 1992; Chung, 1993; Kim 2010 for Korean, and Aikhenvald, 2006; Dixon, 2006 for various African languages). In this paper, I investigate a more complex form of SVCs (namely resultative SVCs) which are almost ignored in the literature. Specifically, I show that (i) the causing event and result state of a Korean change-of-state verb should be separately represented in the lexical information of the verb, (ii) the resultative SVCs are really a type of SVC by comparing the core concept of SVCs (i.e. serializing subevents and so non-cancellation of V1 result state or object) with the corresponding properties of the construction in question, and (iii) SVCs generally have the constraint that result state or object should be created after the event of V1 (with more evidence from light verb SVCs). Finally, I present an analysis of the resultative SVC and light verb SVC in Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (Pollard and Sag, 1994; Sag et al., 2003).