On some expressions of plurality in Korean and their implications: With reference to Chinese and Japanese

Li (1999) and Ochi (2012) examine the behavior of the plural suffixes in Chinese and Japanese, i. e., men and tachi, respectively, and argue that their behavior sheds light on the syntax of noun phrases in the languages in question. In this paper, I extend Li's and Ochi's analyses to equivalent expressions of plurality in Korean and consider their implications. In particular, I examine the properties of tung and tul, focusing largely on the former, an element that has not received any attention in the generative syntactic literature on Korean. I show that unlike their Chinese and Japanese counterparts, tung and tul show complementarity with respect to the collective-plural dichotomy Li and Ochi discuss. I argue that these interpretive differences correlate with the structural status of tung and tul on the one hand and the types of nouns that these elements are attached to on the other. In addition to sheding light on the structure of noun phrases in Korean more generally, the discussion also has implications for the structure of numeral classifier constructions, which has been rather controversial. (Konkuk University)