A Crosslinguistic Semantic Analysis of Again

Abstract

This paper presents a semantic research of the crosslinguistic behavior of ‘again’ focusing on tasi in Korean. Even though its semantic behavior has been noted in some previous analyses like Yoon (2007) and Oh (2009), the semantic properties of tasi have not been fully investigated and explained. Based on a wider range of data and observations, this paper points out the shortcomings of Oh’s (2009) structural account. As an alternative, I propose a lexical account which assumes that tasi is polysemous and show that a lexical approach can provide a better account of the observed semantic properties of tasi in comparison with again in English. I also discuss the occurrence of tasi in negation and provide an observation that tasi-nun is only permitted in negation, suggesting a possible account.