{을/를} 助詞의 意味와 統離

Syntax and Semantics of the Particle ul/lul

Traditionally, the particle ul/lul is taken to have the only function of object marking. But the real uses. of the particle show strange phenomena which are unexplainable with the function of object marking. The particle ull lui appears in the intransitive construction and even in the passive subject position. This paper aims to make it clear that ull lul is not only a syntactic element but also a semantic one which has a sort of lexical meaning in itself, i.e., the function of non-contrastive topicalization. For the purpose of this elucidation, we first of all, paid much attention to the concepts of object hood and transitivity. With regard to these concepts, it be useful to set up a structure of semantic archetype from which a large variety of meanings of tran· sitive construction can be derived. We considered the structure of `Actor-Patient-Action` (APA) as the semantic primitive of transitive constructions. So far as the Korean language is concerned, object hood can be explained with the enlargement of a patient role in the APA structure of meaning. The object is nothing but a concrete or an abstract entity on which an action passes directly. Potenial working of subject or totality of objects worked are relevant to the sophistication of the concepts, but they are peripheral. With this criterion, we eliminated real object marking of ulllul. And to the residual uses of ul/lul, we attempted to characterize them as a topic marker.` The notion of topic itself is at stake and the present state of approaches to this problem renders no available tools for us to decide which element in a sentence is a topic, especially in the case of ul/lul. We commit ourselves to the assumption that topic is a discourse oriented notion, that a discourse develops from the established knowledge stored in the memeory of a hearer into the transformations of the knowledge by adding some new informations, and that the established knowledge comprises not only the previovsly mentioned elements in a diseourse but also the elements which are in the permanent registry as Kuno postulated. Pragmatic presuppositions should be imparted into the established knowledge, since a discourse progresses in a real world where so many things are already known. The established elements have a low communicative dynamism, but their communicstive importances are high. The ul/lul but the object marker functions just like that. With reservation of some theoretical difficulties we have come to a conclusion that the ul/lul should be characterized as a topic marker.