Semantic Features of Countability in Korean

Since countability is a grammatical notion, the distinction between count and mass nouns may not reflect countability in the real world. Based on this, Chierchia (1998a; 1998b) provides a typological study of plurality and genericity, which does not account for countability in Korean. Nemoto (2005) revises Chierchia's analysis to deal with count and mass nouns in Korean and Japanese. This study discusses problems with the previous analyses and proposes that the semantic feature of humanness is the main criterion for countability in Korean.