The Syntax and Semantics of amwu N-to/-irato/-ina in Korean

Abstract

This presentation reports the syntactic distribution of amwu-N-to/-irato/-ina phrases, which are representative polarity sensitive items (PSIs) in Korean, and accounts for their semantic characteristics in terms of "arbitrary choice quantification" and "concession." We extensively illustrate the distributional behaviour of the PSIs in various constructions and roughly generalize the distribution in terms of "(anti/non-) verdicality." We claim amwu denotes an arbitrary choice quantifier, and the particles -to/-irato/-ina as "concessive" markers, so the compounds denote a special element in a pragmatic scale determined by context/situation. Based on the pragmatics of scalar implicature, accounts for the apparent ambiguity of PSIs between "universal" and "existential" readings, and further characterizes the difference among the concessive markers -to/-irato/-ina in terms of "quantity/quality scale."