| This dissertation studies the so-called verbal nouns (or deverbal nominals) in Korean. Verbal nouns possess the typical properties of deverbal nominals across languages, namely, they have both nominal and verbal properties. However, they differ from other deverbal nominals in one important aspect: they exhibit properties of nouns and verbs only in certain contexts. These are, in the complement position of ha, traditionally known as a light verb in Korean, and in the complement position of aspectual morphemes (e.g. cwung 'during', cen 'before', and hwu 'after'). The former context in which verbal nouns appear as the complement of ha is called the Light Verb Constructions, and the latter the Temporal Aspectual Constructions.;In this dissertation, I attempt to derive the properties of verbal nouns in Korean from their syntactic structures. Specifically, I propose that verbal nouns are ambiguous between event readings and result readings. Verbal nouns with different reading are argued to be associated with distinct syntactic structures. Distinct structures give rise to both nominal and verbal properties only for event verbal nouns. Specifically, the syntactic structure of event verbal nouns involves certain verbal functional projections which explains the verbal properties manifested by these verbal nouns, as proposed by Alexiadou 1998 and van Hout and Roeper 1998, among others. In the proposed analysis, event verbal nouns can occur only in light verb constructions and temporal aspectual constructions because of the subcategorization restriction; namely, that event verbal nouns are subcategorized only by the functional head Tense. Result verbal nouns, on the other hand, occur elsewhere. Hence, in regular subject or object positions, only result verbal nouns can appear and no mixed properties of nouns and verbs are attested in these environments.;The proposed analysis provides an explanation for both light verb constructions and temporal aspectual constructions. Though the two constructions look different at a first glance, I show that they are, in fact, analogous to each other at a closer look. In both of these constructions, only event verbal nouns can appear and ha, normally known as a light verb in the literature, is a dummy verb. |
