earticle

영어

A central issue in the domain of lexical aspect has been to find out how a different type of object is associated with the property of an event VP. This paper addresses this issue by comparing English with Korean. In particular, the focus of this paper is on one of the properties of an event VP, namely telicity. A telic event means that the event has an endpoint while an atelic event indicates that the event has no endpoint. In English, for a telic event, it is crucial to have an object whose quantity is specified; for example, an object such as ‘two apples’ but not ‘apples’. In Korean, the range of an object that the language allows is different from that of English. An immediate question is how to characterize lexical aspect of Korean with respect to telicity: is a specified quantity of an object important for telicity of an event VP in Korean similar to English? By providing a recent empirical evidence from an online judgment task conducted with Korean native speakers, this paper proposes that Korean cannot be the same as English. It is shown that a specific quantity as in English is not a main factor that plays a role for telicity of an event VP in Korean. Rather, it is shown that a different factor such as modification of a time adverbial phrase can play a role.