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Quantifiers and Meaning.

  • Korean Semantics
  • 2012, 39(), pp.1-23
  • Publisher : The Society Of Korean Semantics
  • Research Area : Humanities > Korean Language and Literature

Park, Chulwoo 1

1안양대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

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).

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