LIN 411/511: Introduction to Korean Lingusitics
Department of Linguistics
Spring, 2005
Instructor: EunHee Lee
Time and Classroom: TBA
Course Description:
This course seeks to lay the groundwork for an understanding of how the
Korean language operates. No prior knowledge of Korean is necessary, but a
familiarity with basic linguistic theory is required. Students will be introduced to
major phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic
characteristics of Korean in light of linguistic/cognitive universals and crosslinguistic variations.
The topics to be explored in this course include: 1) the sound system of
Korean; 2) word formation; 3) phrase structure and argument selection in Korean;
4) topic construction; 5) interpretation of common nouns and pronouns; 6) tense,
aspect, and modality; 7) negation; 8) word-order variation and information
change; 9) different speech levels and honorifics in Korean.
Textbook:
Sohn, Ho-min. 1999. The Korean Language. The Cambridge University Press.
Requirements:
Undergraduate: Attendance and participation (15%), Homework assignments
(25%), Midterm examination (25%), Final examination (cumulative, 35%)
Graduate: Attendance and participation (15%), Homework assignments (20%),
Midterm examination (15%), Final examination (cumulative, 20%), Term paper
(30%)
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There will be no make-up exams or late homework without valid
documentation or a prior consent of the instructor.
Undergraduate and graduate students will be given different homework.
Homework will consist of exercises given every other week.
Graduate students are expected to read some current research articles and
write a short term paper using Korean data.
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Course Schedule:
Week
#1
Topic
Introduction
#2
The Sound System of Korean
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#3
Readings and Homeworks
Sohn (1999, ch. 1 & 2)
Basic typological characteristics of Korean
Sohn (1999, ch. 7)
Cho and Sells (1996)
Sound system
Major phonological rules
Lexicon
Sohn (1999, ch. 5)
H.W.
1
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#4
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Phrase structure and case marking
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#5
Word formation
Phonology/morphology interface
Cho (1990)
O’Grady (1991)
The notion of subject and object
Functional projections in Korean
Unaccusatives, causatives and passives
Nominal Reference
Sohn (1999, ch. 9)
H.W.
2
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#6
 Binding and anaphora
Topic construction and information structure
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#7
Jun and Oh (1996)
Wee (1996)
Sohn (1999, ch. 8)
H.W. 3
Two negative forms –an vs. –ci ahn and scope
Negative polarity items
Midterm Examination
Movement and scrambling
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#10
Topic, contrastive topic and focus
Focus particles –to ‘also’ and –man ‘only’
Information and intonation
Negation and negative polarity
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#8
#9
Plural and mass terms/ (in)definiteness
Lee, C. (1998)
Quantification: numeral classifier and floated quantifier
Choi (1999, ch. 5.2)
Word-order variation and information change
Wh-in-situ
Tense, aspect and modality
Lee, H (1991)
H.W.
4
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#11
#12
#13
#14
#15
Lexical and grammatical aspect
Lee, C. (1987)
Past and present tenses in simple and embedded clauses
Modality categories and conditionals
Context
Lee, E. (2003)
 Indexicals
 Implicature, presupposition and entailment
Conversational style
Lee, H. (1991 )
 Different speech levels
 Honorifics
Review
Presentation of term papers
Final Examination
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H.W. 5
Graduate Student Readings:
Cho, Young-mee Yu. 1990. Syntax and phrasing in Korean. In The Phonology-Syntax
Connection, ed. Sharon Inkelas and Draga Zec. 47 – 62. CSLI Publications.
Cho, Young-mee Yu and Peter Sells. 1995. A lexical account of inflectional suffixes in
Korean. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 4, 119 – 174.
Choi, Hye-Won. 1999. Optimizing Structure in Context: Scrambling and Information
Structure. CSLI Publications.
Jun, Sun-Ah and Mira Oh. 1996. A prosodic analysis of three types of wh-phrases in
Korean. Language and Speech 39, 37 – 61.
Lee, Chungmin. 1987. Temporal expressions in Korean. In J. Verschueren and
Bertuccelli-Papi, M. (eds.), The Pragmatic Perspective: Selected Papers from the 1985
International Pragmatics Conference, Benjamin, Amsterdam, 405 – 447.
Lee, Chungmin. 1998. Numeral classifiers and quantification. In J. Jeligman. (ed.) The
Third Information-Theoretic Approach to Logic, Language and Computation. Stanford,
CSLI Publications.
Lee, EunHee. 2003. Differences between two alleged perfects in Korean. Journal of East
Asian Linguistics 12, 1 – 17.
Lee, Hyo-Sang. 1991. Tense, aspect and modality: A discourse-pragmatic analysis of
verbal suffixes in Korean from a typological perspective. Unpublished doctoral
dissertation, UCLA.
O’Grady, William. 1991. Categories and Case: The Sentence Structure of Korean. John
Benjamins, Amsterdam.
Wee, Hae-Kyung. 1998. Semantics and pragmatics of contrastive topic in Korean and
English. In N. Akasuka, H. Hoji, S. Sohn and S. Strauss (eds.), Japanese/Korean
Linguistics 7.
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