Notes on word order variation in Korean

Chongwon Park and Jaehoon Yeon
University of Minnesota Duluth | SOAS University of London, The Academy of Korean Studies

Abstract

This article aims to develop an analysis of scrambling or word order variation in Korean from a pragmatic/cognitive perspective. Although extensive research has been carried out on this issue, most extant research attempts to provide analyses of the phenomenon by identifying grammatical features posited for syntactic operations. Unlike the previous research, we demonstrate that word order variation needs to be understood with respect to its communicative function; it is motivated by the speaker’s intention to convey information more effectively. It is emphasized that understanding the association between information structure and word order variation should be an essential task for the analysis of the latter phenomenon. We further discuss five conversational strategies that motivate non-canonical word orders, which include juxtaposition, backmasking, right dislocation, add-on, and floated quantifier strategies.

Keywords:
Publication history

Date received: 14 March 2022

Date accepted: 27 February 2023

Published online: 20 July 2023

Table of contents

Korean exhibits the canonical SOV word order, as shown in (1). Sentence (1) presupposes that the addressee is familiar with Chelswu, and an apple or the event of Chelswu’s eating an apple is interpreted as new information.

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