On the Semi - Lesical Status of Korean ' come ' and ' go '

Abstract

Sookhee Lee. 2000. On the Semi-Lexical Status of Korean `come` and `go`. Studies in Modern Grammar 21, 1-20. In this paper, I argue that Korean motion verbs such as o-`come` and ka-`go`, when they come in serializing constructions, are neither truly lexical nor purely functional, but rather SEMI-LEXICAL. First of all, I discuss the functional behavior of `come` and `go` in monoclausal serial structure, based on sentential adverb position, argument projection, mode of composition with the full verb, and other criteria. I then argue that semantic bleaching or semantic weakening found in these verbs entails diachronic change. Syntactic and semantic investigation on these verbs reveals that they are in the process of syntactic-lexical transition, say grammaticalization. It is supported by cross-linguistic observations on other verb-serializing languages such as Yoruba and Chinese. My account for the grammaticalization of `come` and `go` makes a prediction about the occurrence of a different type of semi-lexical category in non-serializing languages; for instance, a certain group of prepositions or particles. This kind of prepositional particles are also not purely grammatical, in that they contribute an additional semantic information of their own to the meaning specified by their lexical head verb. This fact is related to a categorial parametric variation found among languages.