Korean deadjectival inchoatives and measure phrases: a compositional study

Abstract

Korean adjectives in general cannot combine with measure phrases (MP), but MPs are compatible with adjectives when they appear with the inchoative morpheme -(e)ci. In this case, MPs can only denote the difference between two states along the dimension denoted by the root adjective. To account for this, this paper proposes that i) -(e)ci is a spell-out of V in the directed motion construction which takes an abstract path argument, like become, and ii) this path argument contains a comparative morpheme. By assuming this we can explain why MPs appear with -(e)ci, as well as other interesting phenomena such as variable telicity in deadjectival verbs with –(e)ci.