Bound Noun Mankhum in Korean

This paper discusses the possibility of categorizing and analyzing mankhum as a bound noun. There are two major meanings with regard to mankhum: ‘degree’ and ‘reason’. Ahn (2011) argues that mankhum can be a bound noun and a particle. Kim (2013, 2015) claims that N + mankhum is derived from an adnominal + mankhum structure by an ellipsis. However, there are empirical data that mankhum is not a particle: a genetive Case marker can be between N and mankhum, but not other case markers such as nominative and accusative. Also, the ellipsis operation in Kim (2015) has problems that are related to the survival of a nominative Case marker and a fixed ellided site in a sentence. In this paper, I argue that mankhum, regardless of the degree and reason meaning, is uniformly a bound noun and assumes that it merges in N and subsequently moves to small n similar to the analysis of a bound noun kes given in Kim (2016). It is also argued that the bound noun further moves to a postpostion head when it functions adverbially. In terms of gramma- ticalization, the bound noun mankhum is highly grammaticalized since it can move outside a nominal projection.