Title

Inalienable Possession Relation in Processing Korean Double Accusative Constructions

This research investigates how Korean speakers process potentially ambiguous constructions that contain a sequence of two accusative noun phrases.  In head-final languages, an accusative-marked noun phrase is analyzed as an object of its clause and the second in a sequence of two accusative-marked noun phrases is typically taken to be the object of a new clause (Miyamoto 2002).  However, Korean also has Double Accusative Constructions that includes two accusative noun phrases which enter into an inalienable relation (e.g., ‘Jinhi-ka(Nom) Mina-lul(Acc) meli-lul(Acc) ttaylyessta ‘Jinhi hit Mina’s head’). 

Thus, a sequence of two accusative noun phrases is temporarily ambiguous, especially when they allow an inalienable possession relation: they can be taken to be co-arguments of a monoclausal double accusative construction as exemplified above, or arguments of a biclausal construction where the second noun phrase is the object of an embedded clause (e.g., ‘Jinhi-ka(Nom) Mina-lul(Acc) meli-lul(Acc) ttaylin namcaeykey ponayssta ‘Jinhi sent Mina to the man who hit (her) head’).

            This study investigates how Korean speakers resolve the local ambiguity.  Fifty-four Korean speakers participated in a self-paced reading task in which they were asked to read biclausal constructions containing a sequence of two accusative noun phrases.  The results showed a significant effect of inalienable possession in that the Inalienable Condition showed different reading patterns than other conditions.  At the second accusative noun phrase, the adverb phrase, and the head noun of relative clause, the Inalienable Condition showed shorter reading time than the other conditions, which suggests that the second accusative noun phrase was initially interpreted as an argument of a monoclausal double accusative construction (the creation of a new clause is know to increase processing time).  But the Inalienable Condition showed greater increase in reading times than the other conditions at the head noun, where the second accusative noun phrase has to be reanalyzed as the object of the embedded clause.

            A Korean corpus indicates that only the inalienable possession relation is more frequently involved in double accusative constructions than in biclausal constructions.  The reading time patterns and the corpus study offer evidence that Korean speakers process sentences incrementally by rapidly integrating various sources of information such as the grammatical information associated with case marking, the nature of semantic relations between two accusative noun phrases, and the frequency of each type of semantic relation.