A Comparative Study of the Korean Adjunct Mwel ‘What’ and Its Chinese Counterpart

Abstract

Many languages use the wh-word to produce negative speaker attitude in the negative wh- construction. In this case, the constructions do not get an interrogative reading. The Korean mwel can be used not only as an argument but also as an adjunct. When mwel is used as an adjunct, the construction mainly expresses the speaker’s negative attitude. In this paper, we investigate how the Korean adjunct mwel expresses emphatic negative force, compared with its Chinese counterpart shenme ‘what’ (Cheung 2008; Dong and Jin 2019; Lau and Tsai 2020; Pan 2014; Yang 2008; among others). Following Rizzi (1997, 1999, 2004), we have argued that the adjuncts mwel and shenme should move to ForceP of the left periphery of CP in order to appropriately derive the speaker’s negative force.