Syntactic Structures of Two Types of Causation in Korean: Opaque vs. Transparent

Abstract

This paper aims to explain the distinction between two causal connectives, -ese and -nikka in Korean. Focusing on environments where the main clause involves the direct evidential marker -te-, the study first shows that (i) when the speaker just heard the reason clause situation from others, but directly witnessed the main clause situation, -ese, but not -nikka, is allowed in the reason clause. (ii) When -te- is used in the main clause, -nikka, but not -ese, allows an opaque reason interpretation, which is evident by the contrastive topic-marking. To solve these puzzles, the study proposes that opaque causal relation is obtained where a reason clause forms a spec-head relation with an evidential head in a main clause. On the other hand, transparent causal relation arises when a reason clause is simply adjoined to an evidential phrase. Given this, it is shown that while -nikka is only compatible with opaque structures, -ese is compatible with both transparent and opaque structures. Also, it is discussed that when -te- is employed as the evidential head in the main clause, its requirement on the direct perception is applied both to its specifier and complement, and thus only in transparent structures, the reason clause situation is not forced to be directly perceived by the speaker: (i). Finally, the study shows that with -te- in main clauses, -ese is only compatible with transparent structures: (ii). Based on the idea that -nikka and -ese express subjective and objective epistemic causal relations respectively, it is discussed why in opaque structures, the speaker’s commitment triggered by -te- conflicts with an objective epistemic reading, whose causal relation should be accepted by all the discourse participants.