earticle

영어

This paper provides a new interpretation of the so called Nom-Gen conversion phenomenon in Korean, which was very productive in Middle Korean. The purpose of this paper is to examine the status of this construction in Modern Korean and show that this phenomenon has become spurious in Modern Korean. There has been ample discussion of this phenomenon in Japanese and two competing analyses have been proposed so far-overt movement analysis and covert movement analysis. Althoguh some researchers argue for the overt movement analysis of the Nom-Gen conversion phenomenon in Korean, this paper will show that Nom-Gen conversion in Korean is completely different from that in Japanese, and hence cannot be treated in the same way. More specifically, this paper claims based on new sets of data that there is no such phenomenon as Nom-Gen conversion in Modern Korean and the examples which have been used to show the existence of this construction are just misinterpreted due to their resemblance to the normal NPs with a possessive NP in the specifier position.