Abstract

The main goal of this thesis is to provide a general description of Korean resultative constructions based on unergative, unaccusative and transitive verbs and to examine the syntactic structure associated with each construction. It is concluded that Korean unergative verbs do not normally permit the predicative type of resultative patterns, which involves a secondary resultative predicate, in contrast to unaccusative and transitive verbs. In addition, Korean does not allow patterns in which a resultative predicate is predicated of the subject of a matrix verb, Based on these facts, it is argued that the resultative construction can therefore be used as diagnostic for unaccusativity in Korean.

An examination of the syntactic behavior of each construction also reveals that resultatives based on unaccusative verbs cannot occur with verbal resultative predicates, whereas resultatives built around transitive verbs can. It is argued that this contrast can be accounted for by an aspectual constraint (i.e., the Single Delimiting Constraint), which states that the event described by a verb may be delimited only once (Tenny 1994). The fact that resultatives based on unaccusative verbs cannot occur with verbal resultative predicates is attributed to lexical delimitation of the matrix verb and the resultative predicate, which leads to double delimiting of a verb phrase, inconsistent with the Single Delimiting Constraint. On the other hand, the occurrence of verbal resultative predicates in resultatives built around transitive verbs does not violate the Single Delimiting Constraint, in that the matrix verb is not lexically delimited and a verb phrase therefore involves only one single delimiting.

Another finding of this thesis is that resultative constructions built around transitive verbs are of two types. In contrast to patterns involving an adjectival resultative predicate, only those occurring with a verbal resultative predicate allow a nominative-accusative alternation on the NP of which a resultative phrase is predicated. A closer examination of the case-alternating patterns reveals that nominative-marked patterns do not have the same syntactic structure as accusative-marked patterns. Based on the results of tests involving negative polarity items, it is argued that nominative-marked patterns are biclausal while accusative-marked patterns are monoclausal.