Pota-phrases in Korean Comparatives

Abstract

In a comparative sentence in Korean, a pota-phrase is interpreted in connection with the compared phrase, but generally pota-phrases can occur in various positions in relation to compared phrases. In this paper, I discuss two major distributional proper ties of pota-phrases. One is that despite the general flexibility of positions, there is a directional asymmetry. For example, a pota-phrase can be associated with a topic if it occurs after the topic, but not if it occurs before the topic. A second is that a pota-phrase can combine with a much larger phrase than a comparative predicate, even with a syntactic island in between. These properties are explained by analyzing a comparative construction as involving multiple foci, assuming that the comparative morpheme te and the compared phrase (or its trace) yield a set of alternatives on the right s ide of the pota-phrase and that a pota-phrase is a focus-sensitive operator that exploits the sets of alternatives. In dealing with focus, I adopt the structured meaning approach.