Development of grammatical voice marking in Korean: On the causative, middle and passive uses of suffix -i

Publication date: Available online 23 November 2018Source: LinguaAuthor(s): Foong Ha Yap, Mikyung AhnAbstractVoice-markers enable speakers to profile a situation/event in ways that reflect their perspective of 'who' or 'what' is being foregrounded as the discourse unfolds. Our diachronic study focuses on how a versatile voice marker evolves new functions as it competes for its semantic niche with other voice markers. Using data from Old Korean texts written in Kukyel and data from Middle and Modern Korean1 texts written in Hankul from the Sejong historical corpus, we show how Korean suffix -i extends from causative to middle and passive uses through reflexive causatives while competing with voice markers -eci and -key ha-. Our analysis reveals: (i) a relaxation of telicity and spec...

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