earticle

영어

This paper explores the aspects of the underspecification of inherent and grammatical aspects in Korean predicates with special reference to Vendler’s(1967) Aktionsart distinctions and grammatical aspect markers ‘-ess’ and ‘-ko iss’ in Korean. It is claimed in this paper that the western concepts of the terminologies such as inherent and grammatical aspects should be newly defined in Korean with the concept of underspecification. The followings are discussed in this paper. First, the four kinds of Aktionsart proposed by Vendler are not clearly defined in terms of features and hence underspecified in Korean for ‘telic’ and ‘durative’ features in Korean predicates, while the feature ‘dynamic’ has the significant effects on the distinctions for verbal classes in Korean. Second, the periphrastic markers ‘-ess’ and ‘-ko iss’ which are frequently considered as the grammatical perfective and imperfective aspect markers respectively do not specify the specific domains of function or meaning for the grammatical aspect markers, and hence are underspecified for the specific functions of grammatical aspect markers.