LINGUIST List 15.1014

Fri Mar 26 2004

Qs: Korean Exclusion Particles;Semitic Plural Acq

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  • Alan Hyun-Oak Kim, Exclusion Particles ONLY in Cleft Constructions
  • nesreen nawwab, requist for review

    Message 1: Exclusion Particles ONLY in Cleft Constructions

     Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2004 15:27:29 -0500 (EST)
    From: Alan Hyun-Oak Kim <alanhkimsiu.edu>
    Subject: Exclusion Particles ONLY in Cleft Constructions


    Dear Linguists:

    Of the two lexical items typically used as focus markers for exclusion in Korean, MAN and PPUN (equivalent to the English ONLY), the latter occurs always in the pre-copular position of cleft sentences, and the other elsewhere, as shown in (1).

    (1) a. Minho-nun mayki-MAN cap-a-ss-ta. Minho-TOP catfish-only caught 'Minho caught only catfish.'

    b. Minho-ka cap-un-kes-un mayki-PPUN-i-ta. Minho-NOM caught thing-TOP catfish-only be 'All that Minho caught were catfish.' 'What Minho caught were only catfish.'

    In appearance, as the English translations show, one does not see any significant contrast between (1a) and (1b), except for foregrounding of ''only catfish'' in a pseudo-cleft construction of (1b), although a similar effect may also be achieved simply by stressing 'only' in (1a).

    Most native speakers of Korean would consider (1a) somewhat odd, for it sounds as if Minho had a magic hand and caught catfish selectively in the premeditated fashion by eliminating all other kinds of fish. For a normal interpretation 'all the fish John caught that afternoon were catfish and nothing else,' a Korean speaker would prefer (1b) to (1a). I find this rather puzzling. Why should there be two distinct lexemes for ONLY in Korean, while English does the job just fine with a single 'only'?

    One other property associated with PPUN is the feature of recurrence, as seen in Minho's repetitive catching action in the example. In this conjunction, Japanese also seems to make this sort of distinction of ONLY. Consider (2a) and (2b) below.

    2. a. Nyuuintyuu-no boku-wo Naomi-DAKE-ga mimai-ni kit-te kure-ta. hospitalized I-TOP Naomi-only-NOM visit-come-give-PAST 'Only Naomi visited me at the hospital.'

    b. Nyuuintyuu-no boku-wo Naomi-BAKARI-ga mimai-ni kit-te kure-ta. hospitalized I-TOP Naomi-only-NOM visit-come-give-PAST 'The only person who visited me at the hospital was Naomi.'

    In (2b) with BAKARI, only Naomi repeatedly visited the hospitalized speaker, whereas the DAKE sentence (2a) is ambiguous in the sense that either Naomi was the only person who knows the speaker was hospitalized and made repeated visits or everyone at work knew the speaker in the hospital and no one but Naomi showed up. The contrast between DAKE and BAKARI in Japanese is very similar to the Korean MAN/PPUN opposition, although BAKARI has no restriction in distribution, unlike its PPUN counterpart. I refer to the type of exclusion lexeme PPUN (BAKARI in Japanese) for the sake of convenience as a marker for 'inductive exclusion' or 'post factum exclusion' in Kim (2003).

    I am just curious to see any other languages that make such a distinction as in Korean and Japanese. Your help is most appreciated.

    Reference

    Kim, Alan Hyun-Oak. 2003. Functional specialization of Exclusion Particles: Korean man/ppun and Japanese dale/bakari. In Explorations in Korean Language and Linguistics. Seoul: Hankook Publishing Co. 133-66.

    Subject-Language: Korean; Code: KKN

    Message 2: requist for review

     Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2004 08:11:26 +0000
    From: nesreen nawwab <nawwab4hotmail.com>
    Subject: requist for review


    I'm working on my ph.D on the acquisition of plurals in Arabic. I would like to review similar research studies, with special refference to related psycholinguistic theories explaining the process of development, experimental studies and elicitation techniques for testing childern production and comprehension of plurals in semitic languages or English.