earticle

영어

This paper discusses the acceptability of inanimate subjects in the transitive clauses describing causative events. Inanimate subjects are not allowed in Korean while they are in English. It argues that this typological difference reflects two contrasting viewpoints on instigating causative events. Korean focuses on the participant's inherent properties such as animacy while English focuses on the participant's actual role such as agentivity in a given situation. In Korean, inanimate entities are not allowed in the subject position regardless of their actual role in a given situation because they are not considered to have the inherent properties, viz. mental and physical capacities, to instigate causative events. In English, however, inanimate subjects are permitted in a situation in which inanimate entities play an agentive role like humans despite their lack of the inherent properties to instigate causative events. This paper also shows that the contrasting viewpoints are reflected in the typological differences between Korean and English in instrumental/associative and goal/recipient case marking system