Emphatic 'ku' in Korean | Dr. Kyumin Kim (Chungbuk National University) and Dr. Emily Elfner (York University)

This presentation investigates the prosody and syntax of the morpheme ku in Korean. The morpheme ku is well-known for its anaphoric definite use (e.g. Ahn 2019, Park 2023), as can be seen in (1a). However, not much attention has been paid to its emphatic use, as in (1b), where the use of emphatic ku carries the meaning that an event is particularly surprising. 

1.  a.  ku chayk

            ku  book

            ‘that book’ (e.g. that I bought yesterday)

     b.  (Kim-i) ku  masissnun twupwu-lo masep-nun  yoli-lul  mantul-ess-e.

           Kim-Nom  ku  savory   tofu-with  unsavory-Rel dish-Acc cook-Past-DEC

           ‘Oh, it is unbelievable that Kim cooked an unsavory dish with that much savory tofu.’  

While the semantic/pragmatic difference in the two uses of ku have been previously analyzed (Kang 2018), the prosodic and syntactic differences between that two versions of ku have not yet been investigated in detail. Anaphoric and emphatic ku, while segmentally identical, are prosodically distinct: anaphoric ku is prosodically weak and reduced, while emphatic ku appears to carry an LH boundary tone, has longer duration and increased aspiration on [k], and is not prosodically reduced (Kim & Elfner 2025). 

The goals of this presentation are twofold. First, we will discuss the results of a reading experiment, conducted with 21 native speakers of Seoul Korean. This experiment was designed to elicit examples of anaphoric and emphatic ku. While the prosodic analysis of the data is ongoing, the prosodic characterization of both forms of ku provide support for the pilot results discussed in Kim & Elfner (2025): that anaphoric and emphatic ku are prosodically distinct, and that emphatic ku appears to initiate a change in the prosodic phrasing of the sentence by creating a new prosodic phrase. Such alterations in prosodic phrasing are typical in Seoul Korean when elements of the sentence are either focused or emphatic (Jun 2005, 2007, 2011, Jun & Jiang 2019). 

Second, we will propose that anaphoric and emphatic ku are also syntactically distinct, which, we argue, provides the basis for their distinct prosodic behaviour. An important distributional property of emphatic ku which has been overlooked previously is that it must appear with a gradable adjective such as masissnun ‘savory’, as seen in (1b); this is different from anaphoric ku, as in (1a), which has no such requirement. We propose that this distributional difference suggests that emphatic ku is in actuality a degree intensifier. Specifically, we will show that emphatic ku merges in the specifier of Deg(ree)P, an extended functional projection of adjective (Abney 1987, Kennedy 1999), and discuss further evidence for this syntactic approach.

About the speakers:

Dr. Kim is an Associate Professor in Syntax at the Chungbuk National University, South Korea. She earned her PhD in Linguistics at the University of Toronto after completing her BA and MA from the Linguistics Department at the University of Calgary. Before her current position, she was a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow at the University of Calgary (2012-2014), and a Replacement Assistant Professor in Syntax at University of Ottawa (2014-2015). Dr. Kim’s main area of research is syntax and its interaction with morphology and semantics. Her specific research focus has been the mapping between argument structure and phrase structure. Another area of specialization has been the syntax and semantics of nominal phrases with a focus on NUMBER such as classifiers, plurals, numerals, and quantifiers with a particular focus on East Asian languages and Indigenous languages such as Blackfoot.

Dr. Elfner is an Associate Professor in the Linguistics Program in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics at York University. She earned her PhD in Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst after completing her BA (honours) and MA from the Linguistics Department at the University of Calgary. Before taking on her position in York University, she was a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow hosted by the Linguistics Department at McGill University, a Banting postdoctoral fellow hosted by the First Nations and Endangered Languages Program at the University of British Columbia, and a Postdoctoral Teaching and Learning Fellow in the Department of Linguistics at the University of British

Columbia. Dr. Elfner’s primary research interests are in prosody and the syntax-phonology interface. Her SSHRC-funded research project investigated the prosody and intonation of Kwak’wala, a critically endangered First Nations language spoken in British Columbia. She also has a continuing interest in the prosody of Irish, and she has previously worked on the phonology of the First Nations language Blackfoot.