A Fine-Grained Distinction of Dative-Marking Causative Verbs in Korean: An ERP Study

Abstract

This paper investigates three types of dative-marking causative verbs in Korean: caused motion verbs, adversative passive verbs, and periphrastic causative verbs that unmarkedly select for dative- particled NP. Caused motion verbs arguably entertain lexically-introduced causative features, adversative passives involve lexico-syntactically oriented causative and passive morpheme(s), periphrastic causative verbs involve a syntactically active causative component. We examined the processing aspects of these three types of verbs, adopting the event-related potential (ERP) paradigm of superior temporal resolution. We crucially employed the dative/ ACC alternation well-known in Korean syntax to come up with the potentially anomalous or marked experimental conditions. The results are: motion verbs and adversative passive verbs with ACC NP, relative to ones with DAT NP, recorded the bi-phasic ERP components: N400 and reduced P600. On the other hand, periphrastic causative verbs with ACC NP, compared to ones with DAT NP, registered only reduced P600. Taken together, only the syntactically-active causative component licences the ACC Case on the NP whose dative particle is dropped. Motion verbs and adversative passive verbs are taken to fail to complete semantic integration with the preceding ACC NP, therefore attempting to undergo syntactic reanalysis.