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Gradients in Korean Case Ellipsis

Stuttgart Workshop on Case VariationJune 20, 2008

Hanjung Lee(hanjung@skku.edu)

Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul

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Case Ellipsis in Korean

• Although Korean is usually described as a language in which all subjects and objects are case-marked, case markers are frequently omitted in colloquial speech.

(1) a. Minsoo-ka meykcwu-ø manhi masyesse.

Minsoo-Nom beer(-Acc) a lot drank

‘Minsoo drank a lot of beer.’

b. Minsoo-ø meykcwu-lul manhi masyesse.

c. Minsoo-ø meykcwu-ø manhi masyesse.

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Research Questions

1. What factors influence the choice between case-marked and unmarked forms of argument NPs?

– focus type, animacy and definiteness

1. Which factors are more important?

2. Why do the factors influencing the choice between the two object forms have the effects they do?

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Goals

1. Investigate the first two questions through two elicitation experiments

2. Propose a processing-based explanation for why the two object forms are distributed the way they are.

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Focus Effects

• The notion of focus has been claimed to be one of the strong factors affecting case ellipsis (CE) in Japanese and Korean.

• Claims:

– The ellipsis of case markers is unnatural when the argument it marks is contrastively focused (Tsutsui 1984; Masunaga 1988; Yatabe 1999; Ko 2000).

– -i/-ka and -(l)ul are focus markers (Kim 1990; Choi 1995; Chae 1999; Ko 2000).

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Effects of Animacy and Definiteness

• Statistical analyses of the CallFriend Korean (CFK) corpus show that the animacy and definiteness, which affect grammaticalized pattterns of case marking across languages are significantly correlated with the choice of case-marked and unmarked forms (H. Lee 2006b, 2007, 2008b)

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Animacy Effects

Figure 1. Interaction of CE and animacy in CFK

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10

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30

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50

60

70

80

Human Animate Inanimate

S

O

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Definiteness Effects

Figure 2. Interaction of CE and definiteness in CFK

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10

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30

40

50

60

70

80

Pronoun Name Indefinite

SO

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Implications of the corpus study

• The tendency to case-mark non-typical or marked arguments which is grammaticalized in many languages shows up as statistical preferences in Korean.

• This motivates a grammatical model that provides a unified generalization over the quantitative and categorical effects of hierarchies within and across languages (Bresnan et al. 2001; Bresnan and Nikitina 2003).

• Quantitative patterning found in Korean case ellipsis can be analyzed with in the stochastic OT framework in a way analogous to an account of categorical differential case marking effects proposed by Aissen (2003).

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Questions that arise from previous studies

• Although the factors of focus and animacy/ definiteness have been considered by different scholars, most studies focus on one of these and overlook the possible effects of the other.

• These led us to ask whether both focus and and animacy/definiteness are relevant factors, or whether just one can account for variation in CE.

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Experiment 1 (H. Lee 2006a)

• Independent variables tested: – Focus type: Contrastive focus vs.

Non-contrastive focus(prominent focus vs. non-prominent focus)

– Animacy: Human vs. Inanimate– Definiteness: Definite vs. Indefinite

• Dependent variable tested: Object form (Case ellipsis vs. Case marking)• Participants: 132 native speakers of Korean (age:

21-27)

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Experiment 1

• Contrastive focus: focus which involves an explicit choice among the limited set of contextually given alternatives.

(2) Replacing focus A: John bought a computer yesterday. B: No, she bought a CELL PHONE.

(3) Selecting focus A: Did John give the job to you or to Mary?

B: He gave it to HER.

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Experiment 1

• Non-contrastive focus: information focus (the answer to a yes-no or WH-questions (4)) or other types of pure new information (objects in sentence focus construction (5))

(4) A: Did you finish packing? B: Oh, I forgot a toothbrush. I packed only

toothpaste.(5) A: How are you doing these days? B: I’m looking for a new job and traveling a lot.

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Experiment 1

• Relative prominence of contrastive focus: – higher degree of context-construability

(Herring 1990; Rochemont 1986; Rochemont and Culicover 1990) – limited set of candidates (Haliday 1967;

Chafe 1976; Rooth 1992) – explicit mentioning of alternatives (Jacobs

1988) – exhaustiveness (Kiss 1998)

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Experiment 1

Table 1. Experimental conditions

We tested 10 items per condition, 80 items altogether.

Contrastive Focus Non-contrastive focus

Human Inanimate Human Inanimate

Def Indef Def Indef Def Indef Def Indef

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Experiment 1

• Procedures: Each participant was asked to fill in a questionnaire, which contained short conversations between two speakers, providing contexts for the choice of case-marked and unmarked forms of an object. The participants had to choose as spontaneously as possible between the two object forms in the given contexts.

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Experiment 1

• Sample questionnaire:

(6) [Contrastive focus, Human, Definite]

A: Jina said that Yumi was looking for her mother all night long.

B: No, she was looking for you-Acc/you-.

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Experiment 1: Results

• Statistical analyses by means of logistic regressions showed that the factors of focus type, animacy and definiteness are all significant predictors of case ellipsis for objects (p<.001, p<001, p<.01, respectively).

• These are three distinct factors independently influencing case ellipsis and cannot be reduced to the other.

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Experiment 1: Results

Table 2. Frequency of case-ellipsed objects

Overt marking Case ellipsis

Contrastive Focus Non-contrastive focus

Human Inanimate Human Inanimate

Def Indef Def Indef Def Indef Def Indef

429

(26%)

444

(24%)

610

(38%)

644

(40%)

737

(64%)

855

(73%)

985

(83%)

1127

(94%)

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Experiment 1: Results

Table 3. The relative importance of the independents

Subfactor name Coefficients

[Non-CFoc]

[Inanimate]

[Indefinite]

[Definite]

[Human]

[CFoc]

+2.76 CE

+1.97

+1.73

1.17

1.77

2.65 CM

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Experiment 1: Summary of the results

• Focus type and animacy/definiteness are both significantly correlated with variation in object case marking in Korean, and neither correlation can be reduced to the other.

• The high-prominence values of the independents favor overt marking of objects, whereas the low-prominence values favor case ellipsis.

• Relative importance of the factors:

– Ellipsis: [Non-CFoc] > [Inanimate] > [Indefinite]

– Overt marking: [CFoc] > [Human] > [Definite]

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Explaining the patterns of variation

The effects of focus type and animacy/ definiteness reflect different functions of case marking.

• Two basic functions of case marking– Distinguishing function: discriminating between

subjects and objects; marking confusable arguments (Dixon 1972, 1979; Comrie 1978; Aissen 2003)

– Identifying function: distinguishing between arguments of the same type (Wierzbicka 1981; Mohanan 1994); marking strong or prototypical arguments on the basis of prominence (De Hoop & Narasimhan 2008)

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Identifying function of case

• Criteria for argument strength (De Hoop and Narasimhan 2008)1.Discourse prominence and referential

prominence

Strong WeakHigh prominence in topicality and focalityHigh prominence in

animacy, definiteness, specificity, etc.

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Identifying function of case

2. Semantic prototypicality (Dowty 1991)

Strong Weak

Proto-agent

Proto-patient

• Languages vary in which features determine argument strength.

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Focus type effects as a reflection of identifying function

Argument strength (focality)

Strong ← |------------|------------| Weak

CFoc (S,O) Non-Cfoc (S,O)

case For Korean the identifying function predicts more

prominent or stronger focus type, i.e., Contrastive focus to be more frequently case-marked than weaker focus type, i.e., non-contrastive focus.

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Animacy/Definiteness effects as a reflection of distinguishing function

Argument strength (Animacy/Definiteness)Strong ← |------------|------------| Weak Human O Inanimate O Definite O Indefinite O

case Strong ← |------------|------------| Weak Human S Inanimate S Definite S Indefinite S

case

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Methodological problems of Experiment 1

• The design was not balanced for subtypes of contrastive focus: the majority of contrastive focus included in the stimuli was what Dik et al. (1981) refer to as ‘replacing focus’.

• Replacing focus ((2)) vs. selecting focus ((3)): Unlike replacing focus, selecting focus is not counter-presuppositional and seems to favor case ellipsis over case marking (S. Lee 2006, H. Lee 2008a).

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Methodological problems of Experiment 1

• The design was not balanced for subtypes of non-contrastive information either:

information focus: 65%

objects in sentence-focus constructions: 35% Information focus objects favor case ellipsis

whereas objects in sentence-focus constructions favor case marking in our experimental data.

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Methodological problems of Experiment 1

Figure 3. Rates of case marking and case ellipsis for non-contrastive information objects

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Info. Foc O. in S.Foc

CE

CM

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Methodological problems of Experiment 1

• The pattern of results found in the experiment could be due to the fact that the design included a greater number of the type of contrastive focus which favors overt case-marking and the type of non-contrastive which favors case ellipsis.

• This calls into question the generalization offered in our previous study (i.e., case variation in Korean is sensitive to the distinction between contrastive and non-contrastive focus).

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Experiment 2

• Examine how subtypes of contrastive focus (replacing vs. selecting focus) and subtypes of non-contrastive information (information focus vs. objects in sentence-focus constructions) exert distinct influences on object case ellipsis.

Table 4. Experimental conditions

Contrastive focus Non-contrastive information

Replacing Selecting Information focus

Objects in sentence focus

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Experiment 2

• We tested 20 items per condition (total 80 items).

• Participants: 98 native speakers of Korean (age: 20-26)

• The procedure was as in Experiment 2

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Experiment 2: Results

Figure 4. Rates of case ellipsis for four subtypes of focus objects

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50

60

70

80

Replacing Selecting Info. Foc O. in S.Foc

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Experiment 2: Results

Figure 5. Rates of case ellipsis for contrastive and non-contrastive objects

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48

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50

51

52

C.Foc Non-C.Foc

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Experiment 2: Results

Contrastive focus[+limited set]

Non-contrastive information[limited set]

Replacing Selecting

O. in S. Foc Info. Foc

Favor overt case-marking Favor case ellipsis

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Experiment 2: Summary of the Results

• The results are not consistent with those found in experiment 1:

Rates of case ellipsis: C.Foc > Non-C.Foc• Different subtypes of contrastive and non-

contrastive focus show different preferences for case marking and ellipsis.

• These results call for a theoretical account that combines a more fine-grained distinction between focus types with the functional motivations for case marking.

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Explaining the different behaviors of focus types

• Proposal: Different behaviors of focus types with respect to their formal realization can be accounted for in terms of interaction of two factors: the strength in contrastiveness and the discourse accessibility of focused objects and alternatives for those objects.– Case marking is sensitive to strength in contrastiveness. – Case ellipsis is sensitive to accessibility.

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Explaining the different behaviors of focus types: replacing focus

argument prominence (most strongly

contrastive)

Replacing focus

Favor overt case marking

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Explaining the different behaviors of focus types: replacing focus

• Criteria for contrastiveness:

Membership in a set (Rooth 1992, Krifka 1993, Vallduví and Vilkuna 1998)

Limited set of alternatives (Chafe 1976; Kiss 1998)

Exhaustiveness (Kiss 1998)

Counter-presuppositionality (Chafe 1976; cf. Dik 1989)

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Explaining the different behaviors of focus types: replacing focus

Membership in a set Info.Foc

Limited set of alternatives Selecting

Exhaustiveness Replacing

Counter-presuppositionality

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Explaining the different behaviors of focus types: selecting and information focus

Selecting focus

Information focus

High accessibility

Favor case ellipsis

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Explaining the different behaviors of focus types: selecting and information focus

• Factors contributing to the accessibility of entities in discourse

recent mention (Prince 1981, Ariel 1990)

explicit mention (Clark and Haviland 1977, Hawkins 1978)

predictability (Arnold 1998)

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Explaining the different behaviors of focus types: selecting and information focus

• High accessibility of selecting focus Recent and explicit mention of the focused constituent and its alternatives (unlike information focus) Predictability: selecting focus satisfies the addressee’s expectation that the question will be answered with one disjunct (unlike replacing focus) (C. Lee 2007)

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Explaining the different behaviors of focus types: selecting and information focus

• Correlation between accessibility and formal marking (see #33):

Accessibility

Selecting > Info. Foc > Object in sentence focus

Rate of case ellipsis

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Explaining the different behaviors of focus types: selecting and information focus

• This correlation between the accessibility of entities in discourse and their formal marking is motivated by considerations of processing efficiency (Hawkins 2004).

• High accessibility for the entities and events in discourse facilitates form reduction and processing enrichment.

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Explaining the different behaviors of focus types: selecting and information focus

• It is efficient to minimize the effort required to process linguistic forms and properties by avoiding the articulation and processing of explicit linguistic material when its properties are already inferable contextually or are readily accessible through processes such as inferences and implicatures (formulated as the principle of Minimize Forms by Hawkins (2004)).

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Conclusion: case variation and focus types

• Case variation in Korean is not sensitive to the distinction between contrastive and non-contrastive focus.

• Patterns in case variation can be accounted for in terms of the interaction of the strength of contrastiveness (case marking) and the degree of the accessibility of an object (case ellipsis).

• This account can be framed using Hawkin’s theory of processing efficiency and correctly predicts patterns of case variation with respect to animacy and definiteness.

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Conclusion: animacy/definiteness effects on case variation

High accessibilityHigh frequency form

minimizationDefault correlation between properties

High-prominence in Frequent Inference toAnimacy/Definiteness association ‘Subjecthood’

Low-prominence in Frequent Inference toAnimacy/Definiteness association ‘Objecthood’

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Selected References

Aissen, Judith. 2003. Differential object marking: Iconicity vs. economy. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 21: 435-483.

Bresnan, Joan, Shipra Dingare and Christopher Manning. 2001. Soft constraints mirror hard constraints: voice and person in English and Lummi. Proceedings of the LFG 01 Conference, edited by Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King. Online, CSLI Publications: http://www-csli.stanford.edu/publications.

De Hoop, Helen and Bhuvana Narasimhan. 2008. Differential case marking in Hindi. In Differential Subject Marking (Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory), edited by Helen de Hoop and Peter de Swart, 63-78. Doredrecht: Springer.

Fry, John. 2001. Ellipsis and ‘wa’-Marking in Japanese Conversation. Doctoral dissertation, Stanford University.

Hawkins, John. 2004. Efficiency and Complexity in Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Selected References

Ko, Eon-Suk. 2000. A Discourse analysis of the realization of objects in Korean. Japanese/Korean Linguistics 9, 195-208. Stanford: CSLI Publications.

Lee, Chungmin. 2007. Contrastive (predicate) topic, intonation and scalar meanings. In Topic and Focus: Crosslinguistic Perspectives on Meaning and Intonation, edited by Chungmin Lee, Matthew Gordon and Daniel Buring, 151-175. Dordrecht: Springer.

Lee, Hanjung. 2006a. Iconicity and variation in the choice of object forms in Korean. Language Research 42: 323-355.

Lee, Hanjung. 2006b. Parallel optimization in case systems: Evidence from case ellipsis in Korean. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 15: 69-96.

Lee, Hanjung. 2007. Case ellipsis at the grammar/pragmatics interface: A formal analysis from a typological perspective. Journal of Pragmatics 39: 1465-1482.