Deictic and Anaphoric Tense in Korean: a Two-Tiered Approach
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
DEICTIC AND ANAPHORIC TENSE IN KOREAN: A TWO-TIERED APPROACH by Kyung-Sook Chung B. A., Pusan National University, 1985 M.A.. Pusan National University, 1987 THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTLAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in the Depamnent of Linguistics O Kyung-Sook Chung 1999 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY October 1999 All right reserved. This work may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without permission of author. National Library Bibliotque nationale I*I 01 C~~ada du Cana a Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographic Ssrvices services bibliographiques 305 Wdlingtm Street 395, nre Wellington OnpwaON K1AON4 atawaO(r( K1AW - Canada The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accorde me licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive pennettant a la National Library of Canada to Bibliotheque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute or sell reproduire, preter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette these sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/film, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format electronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriete du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protege cette these. thesis nor substantial extracts from it Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent etre imprids reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. ABSTRACT Cross-linguistically the general concept of tense makes use of the deictic center, the speech time or the present moment. Present, past, and future means that a time reference, usually the situation or event time, is simultaneous with. anterior to, or posterior to the deictic center. However, these three temporal relations are not enough to account for the various tense phenomena in the world's languages. In addition to these absolute tenses. we must refer to relative tense (Comrie 1985). which has reference points other than the deictic center. A third time point. the reference point (Reichenbach 1947) or shifted secondary deictic center, is needed to account for relative tense. In this thesis, I show that the notions absolute and relative tcnse can be given a precise semantic and syntactic structure when conceived of as deictic and anaphoric tense respex tivel y. First, I discuss the need for anaphoric tense in addition to deictic tense and show how languages utilize these two concepts. Next, I show how these concepts can be used to provide an analysis of some complex tense phenomena in Korean. There has been a lot of confusion concerning the Korean verbal inflection suffixes since they do not correspond to the inflectional system of western languages. I suggest that the Korean verbal inflection system has two levels. a speaker-addressee-oriented level and a situation (event)-oriented level. The so called "retrospective marker" -te-, are speaker-addressee-oriented, while other tenses, for example the so called "past tense" or "perfect" -m-,is situation-oriented. ft follows that TE tense is a deictic tense whereas other tenses are anaphoric. I show that TE tense never denotes situation time but rather the speaker's past-shifted viewpoint-the reference point is a past-shifted deictic center, unlike other simple deictic tenses, which denote either a situation time or a reference point. Using the concepts of deictic and anaphoric tense. I develop a syntactic structure of tense interpretation, following the pndicative theory of tense (Stowell 1995, 1996, and others) in which tense is like a predicate in that it always has a subject-like temporal argument4 deictic center- and an object-like temporal argument -the situation time. Here, anaphoric tense means that its (subject-Like) external argument is linked to the (object-Ue) internal argument of a higher tense yielding a pattern of coreference reminiscent of the coreferential relationship between nominals and their anaphon. I show how the two notions of tense can be translated into a two-tiered syntactic structure and how this structure not only accounts for the Korean phenomena but also provides a straightforward account of English perfect tense and the mle of sequence of tenses in English. Recognition of the essential difference between deictic tense and anaphoric tense not only allows for a systematic treatment of complex tense phenomena in Korean and other languages but it also allows for a formal representation of tense structure in terms of familiar syntactic configuration. To the memory of my mother ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am deeply grateful to Donna Gerdts, my senior supervisor, for her hearty, intellectual, and financial support. I am greatly indebted to her for her encouragement and concern. I owe a great deal to Charles Ulrich too. He advised me on the right style of writing, helped me with my infelicitous and inconsistent English, and proofread the rial draft. I would like to express sincere thanks to the members of my thesis committee, Nancy Hedberg and Rejean Canac-Marquis. ! also would like to thank all the professon, staff members, and all my colleague students, who helped and advised me in some ways. My special thanks go to my parents, my brother, my sister, and my in-laws, especially my mother-in-law, for their emotional and practical support. Finally, I cannot thank my husband Sang-Baek and my daughter Chung-Won too much for their encouragement, patience, and steadfast support. Without these all, this thesis could not have been written. All errors in this thesis are mine. TABLE OF CONTENTS Approval Absuact Dedication Acknowledgments vi Table of Contents vii List of Tables List of Figures List of Abbreviations CHAPTER 1. DE1CTIC AND ANAPHOWC TENSE 1.1. The grammaticalization of Tense 1.2 Tense and Aspect as a Deictic System 1.3. Deic tic and Anap horic Tense 1.4. The Third Time Point 1.4.1. Reichenbach (1947) 1 A.2. Schopf (1989) 1.4.3. Smith (199 l), Hornstein (1990), and McGilvray (1 99 1) 1.4.4. Klein (1994) 1.4.5. The Reference Point 1.5. Summary CHAITER 2, THE KOREAN TENSE SYSTEM 2.1. The Korean Predicate System 2.1.1. Situation-Oriented Suffixes and Speaker-Oriented Suffixes 2.1.2. Korean Verb Classification 2.1.2.1. Dik's (1994) and Smith's (199 1) Classifications 2.1.2.2. Suh's (1 994) Korean Verbs Classification 2.1.2.3. Three Parameters: 'Static', 'Agentive', and 'Telic' 2.1.2.3.1. Verbs of State 2.1.2.3.2. Process Verbs 2.1.2.3.3. Verbs of Activity vii 2.2. Aspects in Korean 2.2.1. The Resultative Marker -E ISS- 2.2.2. The Progressive Marker -KO ISS- 2.3. Korean Tense Markers 2.3.1. The Speaker-Oriented Tense and Shifted Reference Point 2.3.2. Situation-Oriented Tense Markers 2.3.2.1. Anaphoric Resent Tense 2.3.2.2. Anaphoric Past Tense 2.3.2.2.1. -ESS- 2.3.2.2.2, -ESS-ESS- 2.3.2.3. Anaphoric Future Tense 2.3.3. Two-Tiered Tense Structure 2.4. Summary 2.5. Korean in Cross-linguistic Perspective CHAPTER 3. THE SYNTACTIC STRUCTURE OF TEMPORAL REPRESENTATlONS 80 3.1. The Predicative Theory of Tense. 80 3.2. The Structure of Deictic and Anaphoric Tense 84 3.3. The Structure of Korean Tenses 86 3.4. The Perfect Tense 91 3.5. The Rule of Seqwnce of Tenses in English 95 3.6. An Inventory of Possible tenses 101 CHAPTER 4. CONCLUSION 103 REFERENCES 110 LIST OF TABLES Table 1 : Korean Verbal Mection Table 2: Dik's (1994) Typology of States of Affairs Table 3: Smith's (199 1) Typology of Situations Table 4: Suh's (19%) Classification of Korean Verb Table 5: Two Subtypes of Process Verbs in Korean Table 6: Classification of Korean Predicates Table 7: Aspect and Tense Markers and Korean Verb Classes LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 : Paths of Developments to Simple Past and Perfective Figure 2: Paths to Development to Future LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS A. Am Anterior Attributive TOP Topic ACC Accusative TRANS Transferentive CAUS Causative CL Classifier COM Comitative COW Complementizer COW Conditional CONN Conective CONS Conjunctive DAT Dative DEC Declarative DEF Deferential Particle FUT Future GEN Genitive H, NOM Honorific Nominative HON Honorific INF Informal Ending IMP Imperative ZMPER Imperfective INCH0 lnc hoative INT Interrogative Lm Locative NEG Negative (Particle) NOM Nominative NOML Norninalizer PASS Passive PAST Past P. Am' Posterior Attributive PRES Present PROG Progressive PROP Roposi tive RESL Resultative S. Am Simultaneous Attributive INTRODUCTION Tense has been a major topic in linguistics and philosophy. However, it remains theoretically controversial. It has not received a unified account in literature. This mans that there is little agreement on what tense is, how many tenses a language has, or whether tense should be dealt with only in terms of semdntics and pragmatics or also in the syntax. Generally languages make use of the concept of absolute tense, where present, past, and future mean that the situation or event time is simultaneous with, anterior to, or posterior to the deictic center or the speech time. The problem is that, in addition to absolute tense, languages have a different kind of tense, relative tense, which does not have the speech point as its reference point (Comrie 1985). Ln this thesis, instead of the concepts of absolute and relative tense, I make use the concepts of deictic and anaphoric tense, in order to give more explicit temporal interpretation. since the latter terms imply smcturally closer relationships. This thesis has three goals. The first is to defme tense as a relational category that takes two timereferring points or intervals.