Korean polarity items

Korean builds its indefinites on the interrogative pronouns, as Japanese does: bare nwukwu 'who' is an indefinite in questions and conditionals; nwukwu-to, with the additive particle -to, is the negative indefinite of nwukwu-to an wass-ta 'nobody came', which needs clausemate negation, the counterpart of Japanese dare-mo; and nwukwu-na, whose -na is the adversative mood of the copula and also means 'or', is the free-choice item of nwukwu-na hal su issta 'anyone can do it'.

Main results

• Korean.PolarityItems.nwukwuTo_licensing_characterized, Korean.PolarityItems.korean_licensing_sound — the predicted and attested licensing environments of the items agree

References

• [Has97]

def Korean.PolarityItems.nwukwu : PolarityItem

Bare nwukwu 'who', an indefinite in questions and conditionals.

Equations

• One or more equations did not get rendered due to their size.

def Korean.PolarityItems.nwukwuTo : PolarityItem

nwukwu-to 'nobody' under clausemate negation, the interrogative with the additive particle.

Equations

• Korean.PolarityItems.nwukwuTo = { form := Korean.Indefinites.nwukwuTo.form, licensor := some PolarityItem.DEStrength.antiMorphic, licensingContexts := [PolarityItem.LicensingContext.negation] }

def Korean.PolarityItems.nwukwuNa : PolarityItem

nwukwu-na 'anyone', the free-choice item; -na is not an additive particle.

Equations

• One or more equations did not get rendered due to their size.

theorem Korean.PolarityItems.nwukwuTo_licensing_characterized (c : PolarityItem.LicensingContext) : c.licenser.Licenses nwukwuTo ↔ c.licenser.Carries PolarityItem.DEStrength.antiMorphic

Nwukwu-to needs clausemate negation, so it is licensed exactly by the contexts carrying anti-morphic strength, which among the named contexts is clausal negation alone.

theorem Korean.PolarityItems.korean_licensing_sound (e : PolarityItem) : e ∈ [nwukwu, nwukwuTo, nwukwuNa] → ∀ c ∈ e.licensingContexts, c.licenser.Admits e

Every attested environment of every item admits it.