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Auteur: Dongsik LIM

Titre:
On the interaction between Korean direct evidential -te- and the event structure of predicates


Abstract/Résumé: Korean -te- introduces the implication that the speaker has directly perceived the event denoted by the prejacent (direct perceptual implication). It is also known that, with the past tense marker, -te- introduces the implication that the sp. infers the prejacent from what he/she directly perceived (inferential implication). Previous studies analyze -te- in terms of this generalization, but they do not consider several exceptions where -te- with past tense can introduce the direct perceptual implication: (1) (after seeing that John wore a red shirt) John-i ppalkan syechu-lul ip-ess-te-la. J.-Nom red shirt-Acc wore-Past-te-Decl ‘(I saw that) J. wore a red shirt.’ There are also cases where a speaker can describe the same event with two different predicates: one with -te- and -ess- (2a), the other with -te- without -ess- (2b): (2) (after looking at the floor is full of water) a. patak-i mwul-lo cec-ess-te-la./??cec-te-la. floor-Nom water-with got.wet-Past-te-Decl/got.wet-te-Decl '(I saw that) the floor got wet.' b. patak-ey mwul-i hungkenha-te-la./??hungkenha-ess-te-la floor-Loc water-Nom full.of.water-te-Decl/full.of.water-Past-te-Decl ‘(I saw that) the water is full on the floor.’ We argue that -te- introduces the implication that the speaker has direct perceptual evidence which entails the prejacent (this amounts to proposing that -te- introduces the inferential implication by default, and the direct perceptual implication is a specific subtype), which is supported by (3):-te- w/o tense introduces the inferential implication: (3) (Looking at the schedule of a conference next week) John-i taum cwu hakhoy-eyse nonmwun-ul palphyoha-te-la. J.-Nom next week conference-Loc paper-Acc present-te-Decl ‘(I infer from my direct perception that) J. will present a paper in the conference next week.’ Second, -ess- is analyzed as a perfective, coercing the result state of a predicate with a complex event structure to be prominent. Under this proposal, predicates like cec- 'get wet' and ip- 'wear' are analyzed as denoting a complex event structure (consisting of a process and a result state). Given this, in (1) and (2a), only the result state of the complex event becomes prominent due to -ess-, and since the result state is prominent, -te- with -ess- introduces the implication similar to actuality entailment of modals (Hacquard 2006): since -te- with -ess- introduces the implication that the speaker has directly witnessed this result state, it becomes similar to the direct perceptual implication. Predicates without any complex event structure do not involve coercion, and therefore there is no way to derive this kind of actuality entailment.