Reconsidering Fusion: With Special Reference to First Person Pronoun Forms in Korean

초록

This paper investigates suppletion of first-person pronouns wuli ‘I.PL’ and ce ‘I.HUM’ within the framework of Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz 1993), adopting the revised fusion rule (Chung 2009). This research demonstrates that DM, through fusion, provides a proper explanation for the realization of suppletive forms, such as wuli in Korean, containing the features [1st] and [plural]. The study also identifies the limitations of Halle and Marantz's fusion rule in the presence or absence of the [+humble] feature, which is resolved by the revised fusion rule, which posits that vocabulary insertion occurs with a vocabulary item, incorporating fusion as a special case of vocabulary insertion. This study highlights the efficacy of DM in accounting for suppletion and underscores that the strength of the revised fusion rule lies in its capacity to account for the suppletive forms, i.e., wuli and ce(huy), irrespective of the presence or absence of the [+hum] feature.

키워드