A Compositional Semantic Analysis of Multiple Distributivity Marker Constructions

Abstract

This paper investigates the semantic properties of the multiple distributivity marker constructions in Korean, mainly with ssik, kakkak, and maypen. More specifically, it shows how the available interpretations of the constructions can be derived compositionally and how the multiple distributivity marker constructions can provide additional empirical evidence for a proper semantic account of each distributivity marker. Adopting Oh (2006a) regarding the basic semantics of ssik, this paper proposes an LF D-operator approach to the other ditributivity markers. The proposed account has an advantage over a lexical approach in that it successfully derives the complex distributive interpretations of the constructions in a compositional manner without modifying the lexical denotation of the distributivity markers for each different occasion, and accounts for the seemingly puzzling facts observed from the interpretations