2012, Vol.39, No.

Korean Semantics 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 1.11

pISSN : 1226-7198 / eISSN : 2734-0171
https://journal.kci.go.kr/semantics

Park Chulwoo. 2012. Quantifiers and Meaning. Korean Semantics, 39. It has been taken for granted that quantifiers are determiners in Korean as in English syntax and semantics. But, we should not disregard that derterminers are not obligatory in forming an NP in Korean. Actually determining function is marked by referential adnominals only and Korean quantitative adnominals act more likely as qualitative adnominals in some ways. So we take only referential adnominals as a determiner which helps forming NP as a specifier of it. On the other hand, in Korean bare nouns can be interpreted as referential in itself like nouns following a determiner in English, depending on their context of use. They can be interpreted as a kind or a group of any number, or an object depending on the situation it occurs. Sometimes the plural marker '-deul' works as an individualizer of a group or a kind. Thus, in those cases, we can assume there exists an unseen determiner which can form an NP with the rest contentful word(s). On the basis of the assumed syntactic structure of Korean NP, we explain four types of so-called numeral-quantitative constructions in Korean. The point is that the two NPs in apposition is mediated by an unseen pronominal which is of a partitive case. So-called scope phenomena of quantifiers, and distributive construction should be approached from the different perspective from the quantitative adnominals or numerals. Quantitative adnominals are divided into three types in meaning. One is cardinal, another proportional and the other situation-dependent(subjective).

This paper deals with the forms and meanings of plurals with respect to the way how the concept of number is realized in Korean. The summary of this paper is as follows. First, the default forms of Korean nouns express general number which is irrelevant to number. And special plural marker 'deul' is needed to express the plurality of nouns. Therefore there is a formal contrast between general/singular vs. plural in Korean. Second, the default forms' likelyhood of singular reading is proportional to the scale of animacy. Third, the actual examples don't agree with the theory that 'deul' plurals are considered to be i-sums and default forms are considered to be groups. And there are no connections between 'deul' marker in nouns and distributivity in predicates. Fourth, there are two kind of 'deul's in Korean where the one is an affix expressing individual plurals and the other is a particle expressing event plurals. The former is combined with nouns and the latter is combined with verbal projections. Fifth, 'deul' of event plural is devoted into expressing distributivity, so distributivity makers in Korean are bifurcated into nominal distributive marker 'mada' and verbal distributive marker 'deul'. Sixth, there are no connections between 'deul' of event plural and the plurality of subject in a sentence.

We treat genericity as a sort of quantification which has a tripartite structure as its proper semantic representation. Semantic characteristics of Korean generic expressions are accounted for through tripartite structures. First of all, we discuss why the two kinds of genericity, i.e. generic sentences and generic noun phrases are separated from each other. Then we discuss the similarity and the difference between them in terms of their tripartite structures. On the other hand, it will be argued that individual-level as well as stage-level predicates have a situation variable, and that genericity is much influenced by pragmatic factors.