On the Categorial Status of-Ko

On the Categorial Status of-Ko

  This paper discusses the categorial status of verbal suffix -ko in Korean. Following Emonds" (1985) claim that COMPs can be analyzed as a subset of P, I propose that -ko, which is widely known as COMP in the literature, belongs to the category of P. I show that the verbal suffix -ko shares a variety of morphological and syntactic properties with the nominal suffix -eykey, which is of the category P: (ⅰ) -ko patterns with -eykey in that both are licensed in the passive, (ⅱ) -ko also behaves in the same manner as -eykey in terms of case drop, and (ⅲ) -ko share morphological properties with -eykey in terms of their interactions with various nominal suffixes such as topic marker and delimiters. Based upon these observations, this paper argues that -ko is of the category P.