This thesis posits that the Korean verb ha-da, which is comparable with the English verb do, can fill a verb slot of a construction when the slot is semantically redundant so to make the construction formally grammatical. Construction is a basic unit ...
This thesis posits that the Korean verb ha-da, which is comparable with the English verb do, can fill a verb slot of a construction when the slot is semantically redundant so to make the construction formally grammatical. Construction is a basic unit of Construction Grammar, in which a construction is a symbolic unit, that is, a direct form–meaning pairing that has sequential structure and may include positions that are fixed as well as positions that are open. Therefore, a phrase, a clause, and even clauses can be a part of a construction. Sometimes, mentioning a part of a construction gives us a cue to infer what the untold part is in the construction. Of these, there are constructions in which the untold part is the verb. The slot of such verbs is semantically redundant. As a result, just filling the redundant verb slot with a generic verb can meet the demand to have a construction which is appropriate both semantically and grammatically. This thesis argues that in some constructions the Korean verb ha-da can play a role to fill into such a semantically redundant verb slot which had to be filled with a verb for the construction to be grammatical.
In Chapters 3 and 4, two propositions are discussed. Firstly, the thesis shows evidence that there exist special symbolic units which combines a specific cluster of forms, not a form with a specific meaning. Secondly, this thesis also demonstrates that ha-da can fill a verb slot of such a construction in cases where the verb supposed to fill the slot is metonymically expected with the help of antecedent parts of the construction.
Evidence showing the existence of clustered symbolic units include:
1. Speakers of Korean can expect which verb is supposed to follow when they encounter some specific elements preceding the verb. Moreover, sometimes such a verb drops out while the construction takes part in a larger complex clause. This is the simplest but most obvious evidence that Korean speakers have the symbolic units combining specific clustered forms with a specific meaning as their linguistic knowledge.
2. Sometimes a verb can be adopted in a sentence even if the semantics of the verb is not compatible with the sentence pattern. In addition, when a verb is used in a specific sentence pattern, the event meaning changes systematically, where the systematically changed meaning results from the meaning of the construction rather than that of the verb in question. This is also evidence of the existence of construction, a symbolic unit combining a specific formal cluster with a specific meaning.
3. If change of meaning arises in a series of forms as a whole, or in a construction, this is evidence that the series is approached and processed as a unit.
4. If a linguistic change in a group of constructions has not been applied to another group of constructions so that they maintain an older form and an older meaning even though the change looks like applicable to them, it demonstrates that each of the latter is a fixed unit in the mental lexicon.
5. Immediate Constituent Analysis is to be undertaken on the basis of constituency, which indicates the degree of closeness of the two neighboring elements. Contradictory at a glance, there exists an element with roughly the same closeness to the left element and right element at the same time. This shows that the three elements come together frequently to be a sole processing unit in the mental lexicon.
6. An ending acts differently according to the conjunctive meaning. This means that grammatical characteristics and constraints are not imposed solely on the ending but on the whole structure [Clause1-ending Clause2]. In short, a construction diverges in accordance with the meaning of the ending, so to form different sub-constructions which are approached and processed separately from one another in the mental lexicon.
On the basis of the evidence mentioned above, this thesis has proved the existence of a symbolic unit, the construction which is a doublet of a specific cluster of forms, and a specific meaning. Then it has shown that the verb ha-da can be used in a verb slot when the slot is semantically redundant for the verb supposed to fill the slot in question is expected with the help of some specific elements preceding the verb. When a construction comes to be adopted frequently in a specific context, the context helps the speaker to recognize which elements there are in the construction in question. This thesis has shown that ha-da is easily adopted for the verb slot to fill with in such cases.
When the verb slot of a construction is filled with the verb ha-da just for the sentence to function intact formally, the thesis refers to ha-da as a placeholder. The concept of the placeholder put forward in this thesis is a slightly revised version of Park’s (2008, 2010a): an element filling a slot formally when there exists a specific slot in a grammatical frame or a frame which is established by discoursive needs, and when the word class and semantic category of the linguistic form for the slot are not settled down specifically. According the viewpoint of this thesis, ha-da fills a verb slot formally, and this process is possible in reference with the grammatical frame, ie., construction. A verb such as ha-da which performs almost only a formal role has also been called a dummy verb or a support verb. However when it is studied from the viewpoint of construction grammar, it is more effective to refer to it as a placeholder.
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