Genericity and Topicality: Towards Dynamic Genericity

Chungmin Lee 한국언어과학회 2011 언어과학 Vol.18 No.1

This paper argues that typical generic sentences are topic constructions crosslinguistically, supporting Lee's 1996 initial claim, but argues against Cohen et al's 2002 claim that focused bare plurals are interpreted existentially. Contrastive Topic and Contrastive Focus can apply to either generic or anti-generic/existential phrases. Therefore, contrastively focused bare plurals can be generic, not necessarily existential. PL-marking and NumCl-marking in Korean and Japanese are anti-generic (existential) and distributive in nature, interacting with information structure. Generic sentences are about generic DPs, which function as Topics as semantic definites such as a bare singular common noun with a Topic marker in Korean (a 'definitional' generic, Krifka 2009), bare plurals (or indefinite singular) in English, and definites in French, typically combined with individual-level predicates of characterizing or kind-referring nature, as in (1) Say-nun nal-n-ta 'Birds fly.' An existential sentence in Korean, on the other hand, has a NOM marker in the subject DP and is PL(ural)-marked, followed by a stage-level predicate, as in (2) Say-ka/-tul-i nal-a ka-ko iss-ta 'Birds are flying,' as opposed to the atemporal PRES predicate in (1). Focus-sensitive cases such as Even mammals lay eggs and cec-mek-i-tongmul-to al-ul nah-a (???cec-mek- i-tongmul-un al-ul nah-a) will be discussed and dynamic genericity is proposed to meet from context to context changes and existential-like generic situations

상위언어적 부정의 SN 담화표지

최윤희(Choi Yoonhee),이정민(Lee Chungmin) 담화·인지언어학회 2008 담화와 인지 Vol.15 No.2

In this paper we will examine some previous studies of the PA/SN distinction and show different discourse expressions in Korean that function as SN in dialogal spoken discourse, highlighting 'kulenikka as a dialogal SN discourse marker. As C. Lee (2005) argued, PA and SN in Korean are expressed, respectively, by the connective' -ciman' and '-anird'. H. Lee (2005b) added here '-nuntey' and '-ko'. We also observed the different forms '-na', '-to', '-myenseto' for PA and '-yo' for SN. However, we found that H Lee's (2005b) SN marker '-ko' also shows PA function when correlated with CT. This means that the PA-CT and SN-CF correlations can be a crucial guideline in distinguishing PA/SN (C. Lee 2005). It is generally believed that an SN discourse marker cannot be used in dialogal discourse while PA can. We found that these have interpersonal, social causes: To refute the other's argument in his/her presence is regarded as insolent and causes him/her to lose his/her face. For this reason many languages including Korean don't have single word dialogal SN discourse markers. Lastly, we evidently argued that 'kulenikka', originally a causal connective, is adjusted and extended and now functions as a dialogal SN discourse marker in spoken dialogue.

The Semantics of Amu N-to/-ilato/-ina in Korean: Arbitrary Choice and Concession

( Chungmin Lee ),( Seungho Nam ),( Daeho Chung ) 한국언어정보학회 2000 언어와 정보 Vol.4 No.2

This paper reports the syntactic distribution of amu-N-to/-ilato/-ina phrases, which are representative polarity sensitive intems (PSIs) in Korean, and accounts for their semantic characteristics in terms of “arbitrary choice quantification” and “concession.” In the first section, we extensively illustrate the distributional behavior of the PSIs in various constructions and roughly generalize the distribution in terms of “(anti/non-) verdicality.” Section 2 claims amu denotes an arbitrary choice quantifier, and the particles -to//ilato/-ina as “Concessive” markers, so the compounds denote a special element in a pragmatic scale determined by context/situation. Section 3, based on the pragmatics of scalar implicature, accounts for the apparent ambiguity of PSIs between “universal” and “existential” readings, and further characterizes the difference among the concessive markers -to/-ilato/-ina in terms of “quantity/quality scale.”

Frozen Expressions and Semantic Representation

Lee, Chungmin 서울대학교 어학연구소 1993 語學硏究 Vol.29 No.3

This paper is concerned with how to represent the meanings of frozen expressions. It considers the argument structures of lexically filled idiomatic expressions such as kich the bucket first and then the semantic representations of lexically open idiomatic expressions (Fillmore et al. 1988) such as the -er … the -er [function type], let alone … [NPI type] and why not … [speech act type] and other grammatically frozen constructions. The argument structures of the lexically filled (metonymic or metaphorical) idioms are shifted from those of their literal counterparts, retaining the minimal aspects of compositionality.

Teaching a Foreign Literature : A Theoretical Review

Lee, Chungmin 서울大學校 語學硏究所 1975 應用 言語學 Vol.7 No.1

Changes in the pattern and disease burden of acute viral respiratory infections before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

Chungmin Park,Donghan Lee,Bryan Inho Kim,Sujin Park,Gyehee Lee,Sangwoo Tak 질병관리본부 2022 Osong Public Health and Research Persptectives Vol.13 No.3

Objectives: We conducted a comparative analysis of the differences in the incidence of 8 acute respiratory viruses and the changes in their patterns before and during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.Methods: Three sentinel surveillance systems of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency and data from the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service were analyzed. The average numbers of reported cases and the related hospital admissions and outpatient data were compared between April 2018–2019 and 2020–2021. Changes in the disease burden and medical expenditures between these 2 time periods were evaluated.Results: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of reported cases of all acute viral respiratory infections, except for human bocavirus, decreased significantly. Data from the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service also showed decreases in the actual amount of medical service usage and a marked reduction in medical expenditures.Conclusion: Non-pharmacological interventions in response to COVID-19 showed preventive effects on the transmission of other respiratory viruses, as well as COVID-19. Although COVID-19 had a tremendous impact on society as a whole, with high social costs, there were also positive effects, such as a reduction in the incidence of acute viral respiratory infections.

Compositionality Reconsidered: With Special Reference to Cognition

Lee, Chungmin Korean Society for Language and Information 2012 언어와 정보 Vol.16 No.2

The issues of compositionality, materialized ever since Frege (1982), are critically re-examined in language first mainly and then in all other possible representational systems such as thoughts, concept combination, computing, gesture, music, and animal cognition. The notion is regarded as necessary and suggested as neurologically correlated in humans, even if a weakened version is applicable because of non-articulated constituents and contextuality. Compositionality is crucially involved in all linguistically or non-linguistically meaningful expressions, dealing with at-issue content, default content, and even not-at-issue meanings such as implicatures and presuppositions in discourse. It is a constantly guiding principle to show the relation between representation and mind, still posing tantalizing research issues.

Factivity Alternation of the Verb ‘Know’ in Korean, Turkish and Hungarian

Chungmin Lee,Daeho Chung 현대문법학회 2018 현대문법연구 Vol.100 No.-

Chungmin Lee and Daeho Chung. 2018. Factivity Alternation of the Verb ‘Know’ in Korean, Turkish and Hungarian. Studies in Modern Grammar 100, 1-40. The cognitive attitude verb KNOW in most languages typically selects for a factive complement (Kiparsky and Kiparsky 1970). It is noted in the literature (Lee 1978, 1999; Kiefer 1978, Őzyildiz 2017, a.o.), however, that KNOW in some languages may take various forms of complements and that factivity varies depending on the complement types. An obvious generalization made is that nominalized complements tend to convey a factive reading, while non-nominal ones tend not to (Kastner 2015). This work makes it clear that for a clause selected by KNOW to have a factive reading, it not only bears a nominal feature but also carries a structural case. This paper additionally points out the following three issues and discusses their theoretical implications as to the syntax and semantics of attitudinal predicate constructions: (i)Cognitive attitude verbs may simultaneously take a nominalized clause and a predicational clause; (ii) The non-factive KNOW in the three languages commonly displays neg-raising and naturally anti-rogativity, siding with doxastic (belief) verbs; (iii) Lexically negated forms of these verbs select only for a nominalized (factive) clause.

A UNIFIED ACCOUNT OF POLARITY PHENOMENA

( Chungmin Lee ) 한국언어정보학회 1995 국제 워크샵 Vol.1995 No.-

This paper argues, in an attempt at a unified account of negative polarity and free choice phenomena expressed by amu lany or wh-indefinites in Korean, English, Chinese, and Japanese that the notion of concession by arbitrary or disjunctive choice (based on indefiniteness) is crucial. With this central notion all the apparently diverse polarity-related phenomena can be explained consistently, not just described in terms of distribution. With strong negatives and affective licensors, their negative force is so substantial that concessive force need not be reinforced and the licensed NPIs reveal existential force. With free choice and generic-like items, licensed by modals, weakly negative in their natrue of uncertainty/irrealis, concessive force is reinforced and emphasized and the whole category denoted by the given Noun is reached in the process of concession by arbitrariy choice of its members on quantificational scale, giving the impression of universal force. The logical consequences of monotone decreasingness are transparent with strong negatives but less so with weaker ones. Negative polarity, free choice, genericity, concession, arbitrary choice, indefiniteness, scale, Korean, English.

Factivity Alternation, Expletive Constructions, and Imaginative Worlds (사실성 교체, 허사구문, 그리고 상상세계)

Chungmin Lee 서울대학교 인지과학연구소 2024 Journal of Cognitive Science Vol.25 No.4

Cognitive (and emotive) factive predicates like know and remember (or be surprised) embed factively presupposed complement clauses, but presupposition for the cognitive category can be cancelled, yielding the factivity alternation phenomenon. This paper examines cross-linguistic data on factivity alternation, with special attention to its types (non-veridical operators, as in English, complement endings, as in Korean and other Altaic languages) and the function of focus marking for alternation in general, and pragmatic (Protagonist Projection) perspective shift helps resolve alternation for [+say]C(omplementizer), as in English. We note that the distinction between the covert/overt FACT (Kiparsky&Kiparsky 1972) and the [+say]C for the non-factive alternant and doxastic category, including imagine, in general. The non-canonical type of polar interrogative complementizer whether (or not) construction is argued to be in parallel with the polar interrogative expletive negation complement in Korean (K) and Japanese (J). In form, both are unexpected. But the expletive negation complement in K and J is unanimously accepted by native speakers, although the English counterpart is not that unanimous in acceptability and interpretation, despite White (2021). However, our survey supports a rather high acceptability and some tendency supporting our claim that the unusual constructions reveal positive bias and hedge in interpretation even in English, imagine whether is also included in our claim. This paper shows how lexical primitives and complement heads together give rise to factivity and its alternation and finally deals with the important world-creating function of imagine.