‘-을 수 있다’ 양태구문의 통사구조와 부정극어 인허

A Syntactic Structure of Korean Modal –ul swu issta Construction and NPI-licensing

This paper explores NPI-licensing in Korean modal –ul swu issta construction, which is ambiguous between root and epistemic modality. In analyzing this construction, previous literature has concentrated mostly on the semantics of issta, which may have a possession or an existence reading. This paper, however, considers the whole of –ul swu issta as the realization of a Mod head, whose interpretation varies depending on its syntactic merge sites; when merged with a vP, it is construed as root modality. When merged in a position above TP, it realizes epistemic modality. Such a structure, coupled with scrambling, can explain the full paradigm of NPI-licensing. In addition, it offers a natural account to interpretations of nominative or topic subjects when matched with stageor individual-level predicates, which existing analyses fail to provide.