Bound Noun swu in Korean, from a Perspective of Grammaticalization: A Reply to Chung (2017)

This paper defends an analysis of a bound noun swu in Kim (2011, 2014) which argues that the bound noun is crucially related to a small n projection. He claims that in a Root Modal reading, the small n assigns a theta-role, but in a Epistemic Modal reading, it does not assign any theta-role. Other researches (Ha 2007, Chung 2007, Tchoe 2015) also have been proposed to account for the bound noun swu. Recently, Chung (2017) provides a neat literature review of those studies and concludes that no theory thus far is adequate. He criticizes Kim (2014) on several accounts: the violation of A-over-A principle; the unaccusative predicate without vP in a Epistemic Modal reading. However, A-over-A principle is somewhat strong; CP with vP and T adn P without vP can be dealt with a further distinction of vP and v*P (Chomsky 2001). More importantly, Kim (2014) provides theoretical uniformity with other bound nouns.