Object Particle Omission in Korean Jieun Kiaer Oxford 1
Research Questions Structural relations are realised not by linear order but by case particles. Then, 1) Why do Korean native speakers omit case particles (though they are so important)? 2) How do they do so? 3) Does omission bring any semantic effect? 4) Does prosody play any role? 2
Core Examples Are they different (or not)? A) 밥 먹었니? Bap mek-ess-ni? Rice eat-past-q Have you eaten? B) 밥-을 먹었니? Bap-ul mek-ess-ni? Rice-ACC eat-past-q Have you eaten? 3
Object Particle and (Contrastive) Focus Effect E-S Koh (2001), H-J Lee (2003, 2005,2006) Compare the following examples. (1) A: Nana-hanthey os-ponayssni? Nana-DAT clothes-sent Did you send Nana clothes? B: Mian, kkamppakhaysse. Sorry, I forgot. 4
Object Particle and (Contrastive) Focus Effect (2) A: Sopo-ane mwe issni? Parcel-inside what exists What is in the parcel? B: Nana-ka os-ul ponaysse. Nana-NOM clothes-acc sent Nana sent clothes (instead of any other gift e.g., shoes.) 5
Counter examples A: Ne sakwa mekullay? Pay mekullay? You apple will.eat pear will.eat Will you eat an apple or a pear. B: Sakwa mekullay. Apple will.eat I will eat an apple. 6
Hierarchy Object Particle Omission Preference (H-J Lee, 2006) Counter-examples A: Ne Did you meet Jinyoung or Minsu? B: Eh, Minsu mannasse. Minsu met I met Minsu. 7
Written vs. Spoken Language Difference Object particle omission is more frequent and easy in spoken Korean. Speech style and prosody matter. Compare a??hama-nun mwul coahanta. (SB Lee 2006) Hippo-TOP water likes Hippo likes water. b.hama-nun mwul coahanta (H%) c. Hama-nun mwul coahay. 8
Neo-Gricean Perspective: Omission is a Marked Situation S-B Lee (2006) Omission brings forth habitual, repetitive, generic meta-pragmatic meaning. A) Pae-lul-tata boat-ride riding a boat. B) Pae-tata boat-ride becoming a sailor. 9
Yet not always What are you doing? a) Bap-meke. rice-eat b) E-mail check-hay. e-mail check. (no meta-linguistic meaning added.) 10
Stage-level vs. individual level predicates A >>> B: natural and frequent A) Na-nun paint chilha-nun-kess coahay. I-TOP paint paint-mod-nml like B)?Na-nun paint-lul chilha-nun-kess coahay. I-TOP paint paint-acc-mod-nml like 11
Spoken Syntax vs. Written Syntax Naturalness is checked in speech mode by native speakers. Cf) Lee s experiment is based on written materials. 12
Light Verbs (28) 노크하다 knock, 데모하다 demonstrate, 데뷔하다 debut 리드하다 lead, 마사지하다 massage, 마스터하다 master 마크하다 mark, 매치하다 match, 메모하다 memo 서비스하다 service, 쇼핑하다 do the shopping 스케치하다 sketch, 스크랩하다 clip, 스톱하다 stop 인터뷰하다 interview, 체크되다 checked, 체크하다 check 커버하다 cover, 키스하다 kiss, 테스트하다 test, 패스하다 pass 프러포즈하다 propose, 프린트하다 print, 히트시키다 hit 히트하다 make a hit, 어필하다 appeal, 디자인하다 design 덤핑하다 dump, 대시하다 ask someone out 아르바이트하다 알바하다. do a parttime job. 13
What does prosody do? Interestingly, object and verb in Korean often form one phonological phrase. Object particle is omitted in order to put the object and verb together in one PP. According to Shin 2011 s corpus work, 91.5% of the time, the length of PP was within 5 syllables. 14
Prosodic Structure of Korean Figure 7.2 Prosodic Structure of Korean 15
Statistics on Korean Prosodic Structure Intonational Phrase 1.58 Utterance Intonational Phrase Phonological Phrase 3.47 Syllable 11.39 Phoneme 24.22 Phonological Phrase 2.20 Syllable 7.22 Phoneme 15.35 Phonological Syllable 3.28 Phrase Phoneme 6.98 Syllable Phoneme 2.13 16
What do you want to eat? 짜장면(noodles with stir-fried bean paste) 짬뽕(spicy seafood noodle soup) {짜장면 먹을래}? >>짜장면을 먹을래? {짬뽕 먹을래}? >>짬뽕을 먹을래? 17
Frozen expressions Sayings (No object particle) Eg) Kong sim-un-te/ kong na-ko//, bean-plant-mod-place bean appear-conj Pat-sim-un-te/ pat nanta//. Red.bean-plant-MOD-place red.bean appear (As one sows, so shall he reap.) 18
Adjacency and Predictability Object-Verb : Adjacency expected Yuna-ka Mina cal ala? (No object particle) Y-NOM M well know Does Yuna know Mina well??? Mina-lul Yuna cal ala? M-ACC Y well know (No subject particle) 19
Hata verbs (SILIC corpus) 20
Minimise Domains (MiD): The human processor prefers to minimise the connected sequences of linguistic forms and their conventionally associated syntactic and semantic properties in which relations of combination and/or dependency are processed. (Hawkins 2004) 21
Minimize Forms (MiF) The human processor prefers to minimize the formal complexity of each linguistic form F (its phoneme, morpheme, word or phrasal units) and the number of forms with unique conventionalized property assignments, thereby assigning more properties to fewer forms. These minimizations apply in proportion to the ease with which a given property P can be assigned in processing to a given F. 22
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