On Grammatically Encoding Anaphoric Definites in Korean

Abstract

This paper investigates the grammatical system of definites in Korean, concentrating on anaphoric definites. Following the proposals on definites by Schwartz (2009) and Hanink (2018), we accept the decomposition view that the determiner D encodes uniqueness, while the index argument or head is responsible for anaphoricity, linking an NP/DP with its linguistic antecedent. From these theoretical vantage points, we illuminate the Korean grammatical system of definites. We first note that Korean employs a null determiner to express unique definites in bridging contexts as well as larger and immediate situations, which is nothing special in view of this language as an article-less language. Likewise, on a par with other languages (except for Washo), Korean does not entertain any morphological exponent realizing the index argument or head for anaphoricity, so that in this language bare NPs/DPs apparently can serve as anaphoric definites in default cases. At the same time, the Korean demonstrative ku may support bare NPs/DPs, especially nominals that carry the continuing topic marker -nun or other focus particles such as –man and –to to strengthen the latter’s discourse functions.