A Short Note on Inclusive and Exclusive Plurals in Korean

초록

The aim of this short article is to give a comprehensive analysis of number in Korean, adding a novel observation about the interpretation of plurals in that language. Based on the new data, our proposal is that number is distributed along the nominal spine with different effects depending on the type of functional head (and semantic features) it is associated with. In particular, we propose that number in Korean is associated with two number projections, NumP1 and NumP2, (see Watanabe 2010 for Japanese, Vazquez Rojas Maldonado 2012 for Purépecha (isolate, tsz), Dali and Mathieu 2021 for Tunisian Arabic (Afro-Asiatic, aeb)). By shedding light on the distinction between inclusive and exclusive plurals in Korean and the relationship between definiteness and plurality, we contribute to the current debate related to the distribution of the Korean plural.

키워드