• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Language and Information Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.202-209
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• 2007

Compound verbs in Korean show properties of both syntactic phrases and lexical items. Earlier studies of compound verbs have either assumed two homonymous types, i.e. one as a syntactic phrase and the other as a lexical item, or posited some sort of transformation from a syntactic phrase into a lexical item. In this paper, I show empirical and conceptual problems for earlier studies, and present an alternative account in terms of Talmy's (2000) theory of lexicalization. Unlike Talmy who proposed [Path] conflation into [MOVE] for Korean, I suggest several types of [Co-Event] conflation; e.g. [$_{Co-Event}$ Manner] conflation as in kwul-e-kata 'to go by rolling', [$_{Co-Event}$ Concomitance] conflation as in ttal-a-kata 'to follow', [$_{Co-Event}$ Concurrent Result] conflation as in cap-a-kata 'to catch somebody and go', etc. The present proposal not only places Korean compound verbs in a broader picture of cross-linguistic generalizations, but, when viewed from Jackendoff's (1997) productive vs. semi-productive morphology, provides a natural account for classifying the compounds that allow -se intervention from those that do not.