Locomotion Verbs and Place Noun Marking

Locomotion verbs are used with various kinds of place expressions which are marked according to the meaning. For example, a goal is expressed either as an object with accusative case or as a prepositional object in English. In this paper, I propose that there are significant similarities between English and Korean in marking place expressions of locomotion verb constructions. In order to account for them, I argue for a semantic feature called Affectedness, which is defined as the aspectual property of a verb, such that it describes an event that can be measured out and delimited by the direct argument of the verb (Tenny 1987). 1 argue that this feature enables us to capture the generalization that any expression denoting affected entities can be marked with lul" in Korean while only a syntactic argument among such expressions allows accusative. case marking in English. This partly explains why accusative marked place expressions in English show a restricted distribution compared to lul" marked ones in Korean