Selection and argument structure: the case of morphological causatives in Korean.

This paper proposes that morphological causatives in Korean are formed through the causative head, Caus(e), selecting for an element of category Voice as its complement. Under the proposed view, various properties of the causative in Korean are examined and accounted for. Specifically, it is claimed that the limited productivity of morphological causatives and the ungrammaticality of morphological double causatives in Korean are due to the listedness of the causative allomorphs, and that the mono-predicational properties of the causative with respect to coordination and the scope of a degree adverb are attributed to the coordinate structure constraint and an adverb hierarchy, respectively. It is also shown that the bi-predicational properties of the causative with respect to the Condition B effect as well as the scopes of a manner adverb and the adverbial for 'again' can be successfully captured under the proposed approach. The discussion shows that the causative alternation in Korean can be best analyzed when it is viewed to be due to causativization that takes place in the syntax, which may extend to the causative alternation in other languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]