Dr. Kyumin Kim

Number, demonstrative, and anaphoric definite

I examine the demonstrative (Dem) ku ‘that’ in Korean by situation it in a cross-linguistic context. I show that Dem ku is obligatory to indicate anaphoric definite and does not indicate unique definite, similar to a strong article in German (Schwarz 2009, 2013) or a demonstrative in Mandarin (Jenks 2018). Building on this, I propose that the syntactic role of Dem ku is to take a DP referentially visible similar to an article in Italian (Longobardi 1994, 2001) or other materials in Scandinavian languages (Julien 2005). Referential visibility is satisfied by a phonologically overt material in D or the specifier of DP in these languages (Longobardi 1994, Julien 2005). I propose that Dem ku plays this role by occupying the specifier of DP. The proposed account is extended to capture a special interaction between number and anaphoric definite; for example, in Korean, plural is obligatory in the context of anaphoric definite in contrast to plural that is optional in indefinite contexts. It is shown that the special interaction is cross-linguistically well observed such as in Laki, Persian, Swedish, or Japanese and so on. A possibility of this type of interaction in Blackfoot is also discussed.