V-e V in Korean is NOT Verbal Serialization

Abstract

I claim that sentences with the sequence of v-e v under the purported serial verb construction reading are not serial verb constructions, crucially diverging from in Lee (1993) and Sohn (1999). I also claim that the sentences with the so called serial verb construction are complex sentences with the morpheme e serving as a subordinate conjunction. I also suggest that the auxiliary verb construction in Korean, which is mono-clausal in clausal architecture like other languages is a development from the complex sentence, which is quite in agreement with the cross-linguistic observation (Anderson 2006, among others).