Semantic Function of Three Forms of Negation in Korean

Abstract

This paper claims that all three forms of overtly negated predicates in Korean, which have been traditionally construed as a NPI licenser, denote an anti-morphic function homogeneously, regardless of their different scope-taking abilities. There has been a line of reasoning (Chung 1993, 1997, Nam 1994) arguing that the semantic properties of the domain where NPIs are licensed characterize licensing environments of Korean NPIs. Chung (1997), for example, argues that overtly negated predicates in Korean do not always denote the same semantic function, and therefore the semantic licensing environments of NPIs in Korean should be more narrowly distributed, unlike Nam (1994) claiming that overtly negated predicates in Korean denote the same anti-morphic function. In support of Nam (1994), I argue in this paper that all forms of overtly negated predicates in Korean invariably denote an anti-morphic function, showing that the different scope-taking behavior of the different forms of negation has nothing to do with denoting different semantic functions.