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Parallel Optimization in Case Systems: Evidence from Case Ellipsis in Korean*

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Abstract

It is well-known that hierarchies of person, animacy, and definiteness have effects on case marking systems in various languages, where certain classes of subjects and objects are marked, but not others. This paper presents evidence of frequency effects of those hierarchies on case ellipsis in Korean. The two major aims of this paper are the following. First of all, the significance of variable case ellipsis patterns of Korean, as found in the CallFriend Korean corpus (LDC (1996)), will be demonstrated when looked at from a functional-typological perspective: variation in case marking between style levels within a single language reflects variation across languages. In a second step, the findings from a comparative study of Korean and other languages are integrated into a coherent theoretical framework – stochastic Optimality Theory (OT) (Boersma (1998), Boersma and Hayes (2001)). It is shown that quantitative patterning found in Korean case ellipsis can be analyzed within the stochastic OT framework in a way analogous to an account of categorical differential case marking effects proposed by Aissen (2003). In this analysis, categorical differential case marking found in various languages is viewed as conventionalization of the same universal pragmatic tendency to mark disharmonic elements, which is also present in the variable case-marking systems of languages like Japanese and Korean.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of English Language and Literature, Sungkyunkwan University, 53 Myungryun-dong, 3rd St. Jongno-ku, Seoul, 110-745, Korea

    Hanjung Lee

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Correspondence to Hanjung Lee.

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*Versions of this paper were presented at the 38th Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, University of Chicago (April 2002), the Gradedness Conference, University of Potsdam (October 2002), and at the Pionieer Workshop on Differential Case Marking, University of Nijmegen (July 2004). I’d like to thank the audiences at all occasions of presentation and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and discussion. Any errors of fact or interpretation are due to my own shortcomings. This work was supported by Korea Research Foundation Grant (KRF-2005-A00076), funded by the Korean government.

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Lee, H. Parallel Optimization in Case Systems: Evidence from Case Ellipsis in Korean*. J East Asian Linguis 15, 69–96 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10831-005-3004-1

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