On how to use anaphoric definites in Korean

Abstract

This paper investigates the anaphoric definite use of bare NPs in Korean, especially responding to Kim's (2021a, b) recent proposed analysis for bare NPs and demonstratives (i.e., demonstrative ku plus NPs) in certain structural environments. Specifically, Kim (ibid.) claims that continuing topics prefer to be expressed by demonstratives rather than bare NPs, and that likewise, the Nominative Case-marked subjects of verbs are more likely expressed not by bare NPs but demonstratives than those of adjectives. Kim suggests a cartography-cum-optimality approach in accounting for the two forms of anaphoric definites in Korean, but this syntactic approach is grounded on the unmotivated assumption that bare and demonstrative NPs belong to the same category and compete with each other to encode anaphoric definiteness in Korean. We take a different tack from Kim's, proposing that the preference for demonstratives rather than bare NPs as a (continuing) topic is attributed to the fact that NUN as a topic marker increases the discourse salience of the NP with it, and that the demonstrative ku encoding familiarity serves as a reinforcing device to do so. On the other hand, the tendency for Nominative anaphoric definite subject NPs of verbal predicates to come with the demonstrative follows from the information structure-theoretic dynamics. While Nominative subject NPs of verbs can enter into thetic (vs. categorical) interpretation in Spec,VP, they may be construed as indefinites. But when they come with the demonstrative, they can surely undergo proper interpretation as anaphoric definites.