경동사구문과 허사

Light verb constructions and the expletive

In Korean, there is a construction called light verb construction where the light verb ha constitutes a verb with what is called verbal noun. What is special about this verbal noun is that they are supposed to be able to have an argument structure just as verbs normally do. There have been a lot of discussions about the construction. But some questions still remain controversial. This paper is designed to make proposals to the questions. The paper begins with the questions about the identities of the light verb ha and verbal nouns. I claim that verbal nouns are nouns contra proposals that claim that they are verbal projections. As for the ha verb, I propose that it is an expletive verb in that it cannot assign Case as well as theta role. A claim is also made that a functional projection v is responsible for Case assignment while theta roles are assigned by the combination of the verbal noun and the light verb ha after the movement of the verbal noun into the ha verb.