(In)definiteness in Korean without an article

Abstract

Kang, Arum and Park, Myung-Kwan. 2020. (In)definiteness in Korean without an article. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 45-3, 451-475. Bare NPs in Korean have recently drawn increasing attention since apparently without any overt grammatical article/determiner on them, they are interpreted at least in three ways: generic, indefinite, and definite. Concentrating on the latter two readings, we investigate how bare NPs in Korean yield them. We first show that indefinites in Korean that correspond to an indefinite article headed DP in English are represented by bare NPs, though specificity-encoding and number-in-focus ones are represented by singular numeral classified NPs. We then show that definites in Korean analogous to definite article headed DPs in English are also represented by article-less bare NPs. Since like in English, in Korean there is no distinction in form between uniqueness-denoting weak definites and familiarity-denoting anaphoric strong definites, it follows that in Korean without an article, bare NPs can serve as both types of definites. Particularly, bare NPs as strong definites come about in restricted discourse contexts where two or more sentences are part of one larger topic situation. Meanwhile, personal names are referred back to by demonstrative-preceded bare NPs, which indicates that in Korean, the demonstrative is starting to develop into a definite article-like determiner. (Hankyong National University, Dongguk University)