A Contrastive Analysis on Causative Constructions and Transitivity in English and Korean

A Contrastive Analysis on Causative Constructions and Transitivity in English and Korean

Based on a cognitive-functional approach, this study examines some differences between English and Korean with respect to the questions of how far and in what ways the linguistic realization of causative events can be varied in terms of the semantic extension of transitivity from prototypes and the notion of agency in transitive constructions. As for language-specific factors that characterize the difference in transitivity between English and Korean, it is proposed that English is more permissive than Korean in the way in which non-prototypical agents are realized as agentive subjects, resulting in a wider range of the semantic extension of agentivity from prototypical transitive constructions. A general typological difference between English and Korean in relation with the notion of agency is that compared to Korean, English is freer in assigning a large number of different semantic roles to subjects without requiring concomitant morphosyntactic changes such as passivization (or intransitivization). Finally, it is suggested that different linguistic manifestations in the notion of agency between English and Korean lead to the varying degree of cognitive categories that structure the way in which the language speaker perceive and interpret causative events.