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On the Distribution and the Semantics of the Korean Focus Particle –lato

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Book cover Contrastiveness in Information Structure, Alternatives and Scalar Implicatures

Part of the book series: Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory ((SNLT,volume 91))

Abstract

The Korean focus particle –lato carries the implication similar to that of English even, but its distribution is different from English even or even-like items in other languages (German auch nur, Italian anche solo, etc.). In this paper, I analyze –lato in parallel with auch nur or anche solo, by decomposing it into the covert exclusive particle similar to English merely and the additive particle –to, which is similar to also. Furthermore, to account for the difference between –lato and auch nur or anche solo, I assume that –to in –lato introduces an additive presupposition weaker than that of also, auch or anche.

This paper is a revised and extended version of Lim (2009) and Lim (2010). I would like to thank audiences at 17th Japanese/Korean Linguistics Conference and CIL 18, as well as Jinyoung Choi, Barry Schein, and Roumyana Pancheva, for their comments and suggestions. I also thank Chungmin Lee and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments. Special thanks go to Elena Guerzoni for detailed comments and extensive discussions. All remaining errors are mine, of course.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Following Horn (1969), I assume that only is truth-conditionally exclusive, and introduces the factivity of the assertion and a scalar presupposition. Also and even introduce an additive/existential presupposition. A scalar presupposition usually does not appear independently, but always accompanies other presupposition.

  2. 2.

    For brevity, hereafter let us call the scalar presupposition in (11) a least likely presupposition, and the scalar presupposition in (13) a most likely presupposition.

  3. 3.

    In Italian both anche solo and addiritura is fine under the overt local negation. But anche solo introduces a most likely presupposition, whereas addiritura introduces a least likely presupposition.

  4. 4.

    In this example I use two forms of ‘yes’ in Korean: kulem and ung. It is unclear why, but for most Korean speakers, with emphasis the former is more likely to be used.

  5. 5.

    A reviewer pointed out that the negative bias effect of yes-no questions with -lato disappears when there is no focal accent/intonational cue on the lexical item associated with -lato. It seems to be the case, but since in this paper I treat -lato as a focus particle associated with intonational focus, I do not take the case into consideration where -lato is not associated with any intonational cue.

  6. 6.

    Chungmin Lee and Jiyoung Shim (p.c.) pointed out the difference between -lato and -man-i-lato, and Elena Guerzoni and Maria-Luisa Zubizarreta (p.c.) suggested to me to make it clear the difference between the covert exclusive particle and the overt –man.

  7. 7.

    Bennett (1982) employs the term ‘standing-if’ and ‘introduced-if’ to refer to non-factive concessive conditionals and factive concessive conditionals, respectively.

  8. 8.

    The problem in this subsection was originally pointed out by Daniel Büring (p.c.).

  9. 9.

    To avoid confusion here I use so-called short-form negation in Korean. In the case of long-form negation, the scope between –man and negation varies depending on the intonational cue.

    Since –lato is accompanied with an intonational cue, we may still conclude that both particles in -lato always takes wide scope over local negation.

  10. 10.

    Following Guerzoni (2003, 2004), we assume Hamblin’s (1973) and Karttunen’s (1977) semantics of questions.

  11. 11.

    Lee (1996, 1999, 2003) analyzes –lato in terms of concessivity, but I do not have space and time to review them in this paper – I hope to investigate this issue further in the consequent works.

  12. 12.

    I thank the anonymous reviewer for raising these issues.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of English Education, Hongik University, Seoul, South Korea

    Dongsik Lim

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  1. Dongsik Lim
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Seoul National University, Gwanak-gu, Seoul, Korea (Republic of)

    Chungmin Lee

  2. Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary

    Ferenc Kiefer

  3. Department of General Linguistics, Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Manfred Krifka

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Lim, D. (2017). On the Distribution and the Semantics of the Korean Focus Particle –lato . In: Lee, C., Kiefer, F., Krifka, M. (eds) Contrastiveness in Information Structure, Alternatives and Scalar Implicatures. Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, vol 91. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10106-4_10

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