대한언어학회 전자저널

Cho, Jai-Hyoung& Chang, Soo Jung. (2017). On the plural feature and its syntactic implications. The Linguistic Association of Korea Journal, 25(4). 1-22. This study addresses the question of whether Korean nouns display parametric variation with the properties of [+arg, -pred] based on Chierchia (1998a, 1998b). Korean bare nouns appear in argument positions, either as singular or plural, and they can function as subjects or objects. The plural marker -tul and the distinctive distribution of quantity-denoting modifiers manifest the fact that Korean, as a classifier language, is not fully masslike. In turn, a classifier language can also have morphological and syntactic systems geared towards the mass/count distinction. These facts lead to the discovery that Korean bare nominals are attenuated mass nouns, rather than strict mass nouns. The current study presents syntactic manifestations of plurality in Korean NPs. Based on Heycock and Zamparelli's (2005) [+LATT] in nominal structures, the incorporation of [+LATT] in NPs is illustrated in terms of the syntactic feature-checking approach. We propose that [+LATT] in classifier languages is distributed in their nouns as default whereas [-LATT] is prevalent in non-classifier languages. Finally, we argue that the classifiers enable Korean nouns with [+LATT] to be individuated as smaller units and the widely used plural marker brings out the property of count nouns as well.

# Key Words: bare nouns # classifier languages # the mass/count distinction # plurality # the Nominal Mapping Hypothesis

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