Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T00:31:03.790Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Transitivity alternation and neutral-verbs in Korean

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 November 2001

JAEHOON YEON
Affiliation:
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

Abstract

Although the way in which the transitivity alternation is realized differs from language to language, it is common cross-linguistically that a pair of morphologically related verbs participate in the alternation. Korean, an agglutinative language, employs derivational suffixes to indicate alternations in transitivity. On the other hand, there are some verbs used either transitively or intransitively with no addition of suffixes or any alternation of the root verbs, but with the object of the transitive verb the same as the subject of the intransitive. We have named this kind of verb the ‘neutral-verb’ and established some morphosyntactic and semantic criteria for neutral-verbs to distinguish the various pseudo-neutral-verb constructions from true neutral-verb constructions. We have observed the semantic differences between the analytic passives and the intransitive form of neutral-verbs on the one hand, and between the analytic causatives and the transitive form of neutral-verbs on the other.

Type
Articles
Copyright
© School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)