An Empirical Study on the Korean Local Reflexive Caki-Casin

This study investigates Korean speakers interpretations of the Korean polymorphemic reflexive caki-casin with respect to interactions between its traditionally assumed syntactic requirements and pragmatic conditions for its interpretational preferences. Despite the fact that caki-casin is poly-morphemic, the study on the interpretations of caki-casin in this paper shows that the behavior of caki-casin differs from that of the English poly-morphemic himself in that it is sensitive to the pragmatic information for its interpretations. With manipulation of pragmatic information, Korean speakers showed a tendency to choose a non-local antecedent or even a non-c-commanding one despite the presence of syntactically legitimate local or c-commanding potential antecedent.