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Share Paper 2462

On the Semantic Role of the Accentual Phrase in Korean NP Coordination
Arum Kang
294-302 (complete paper or proceedings contents)

Abstract

This paper investigates the semantic effect of the Accentual Phrase (Jun 1993, Jun 1998) in the interpretation of Korean NP coordination. The NP coordination can be separated into Accentual Phrases (i.e., phrasing) or it can be grouped together by one Accentual Phrase (i.e., dephrasing). When the NP coordination is combined with an ambiguous predicate, the phrased NP coordination suggests a distributive reading, while dephrased NP coordination suggests a collective reading. This implies that the formation of accentual phrasing in NP coordination participates in the disambiguation of sentential interpretation. The author argues that the Accentual Phrase in NP coordination operates as a group formation function ↑ (Landman 1989a, 2000): the Accentual Phrase lifts the singular individuals to the level of a group, and necessitates a collective interpretation. The proposed analysis further accounts for the interaction of distributive operator kakkak 'each' with the Accentual Phrase. The paper shows how the interpretation of the construction can be derived compositionally. Regarding the properties of the semantics of the Accentual Phrase, it is argued that the Accentual Phrase does not determine meaning but signifies the most preferred meaning among the possible interpretations.

Published in

Proceedings of the 28th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics
edited by Mary Byram Washburn, Katherine McKinney-Bock, Erika Varis, Ann Sawyer, and Barbara Tomaszewicz
Table of contents
Printed edition: $375.00