Historical Change of the Case-frame in Korean Verbs

This paper aims to describe how the case-frame structure of Korean verbs has changed historically, based on text materials. Each verb has its own case-frame structure depending on its lexical characteristics. The case-frame structure, which is composed of NPs, plays a key role in determining the sentence structure of a language as a syntactic argument structure. Hence the case-frame structure of verbs must be well investigated in order to analyze the sentence structure of a language appropriately. Case-frame structure is subject to diachronic change. Change in case-frame structure inevitably causes the change in the way in which a sentence is composed. In this sense, the research into the change of case-frame structure contributes to our understanding of the change in sentence structure. In this paper, I classify the change in case-frame structure into 1) the changes from 'NP-ul' to (a) 'NP- ey taehaye', (b) 'NP-eykey', (c) 'NP-u/o', and 2) those from 'NP-ileylkwa' to (a) 'NP-kwa', (b) 'NP-ul'. And I discuss each group one after another. This discussion can be summarized as follows: [1] the changes of 'NP-ul Y' structure a. NP-ul > NP-ey taehye nilA-/malha- 'say', mwut- 'ask', etc. tut- 'hear', al- 'know', sAlanghA-/saengkakha- 'think' b. NP-ul > NP-eykey cwu-'give' c. NP-ul > NP-ulo sam- 'make' [2] the changes of 'NP-ileylkwa Y' structure a. NP-ileylkwa > NP-kwa kAthA-/kath- 'be same' b. NP-ey > NP-ul po- 'see', al- 'know', molu- 'not:know'이 논문은 1 999년도 한국학술진홍재단의 연구 비에 의하여 지원되었음. KRF-99-041-A00002