Semantic relations and multiple case constructions: an experimental approach

Multiple Nominative Constructions (MNCs) and Multiple Accusative Constructions (MACs) have been some of the hottest and interesting topics in Korean syntax. Though there have been lots of previous studies on these constructions, most of them have provided theoretical accounts. Recently, Lee (2013) took an experimental approach and examined native speakers' grammaticality judgment of these constructions. This paper took the same approach to these constructions, but the experiment was performed with 100 native speakers. Ryu (2013) tried to unify MNCs and MACs into Multiple Case Constructions (MCCs) and to classify them into 16 types based on the semantic relations. This paper adopted his data sets and the experiment was performed based on these 16 semantic relations. The experiment was designed following Johnson (2008); and the native speakers' grammaticality judgments were measured with two scales, numerical estimates and line drawing, though the latter was adopted in the actual analyses. Through the experiment, the following facts were observed again: (ⅰ) The grammaticality of the MCCs does not constitute a homogeneous group, (ⅱ) The grammaticality of the MCCs varies depending on which semantic relations hold between two NPs, (ⅲ) MNCs had more grammaticality judgments than MACs if both constructions occurred in the similar contexts, and (ⅳ) the sentences in some MAC types had much lower grammaticality than those in the others, as Ryu (2013) mentioned.