Classificatory Incorporation in Korean and the Syntax-Semantics Interface

Does syntactic argument projection always occur? This project explores the syntax-semantics mapping of arguments, with an empirical focus on incorporation, which poses a challenge to theories of argument structure in that it requires an internal argument-introducing predicate, but creates syntactic structures where the internal argument is somehow suppressed or deficient in someway. Building on the insights of vanGeenhoven (1998), Chung & Ladusaw (2004), and Legate (2014), I argue that syntactic argument projection, rather than being obligatory, is in fact one of two possible routes for argument saturation. An empirical investigation of incorporation phenomena reveals that the semantic profile of being an argument-introducing predicate opts one into two possible structural realities: 1) direct saturation of the argument slot via syntactic realization of the DP argument; or 2) restrictive modification and existential closure of the argument variable. The result of this second option is a syntactically intransitive structure— I argue, in opposition to Chung & Ladusaw (2004), that even classificatory incorporation, which, in Korean, gives the surface illusion of transitivity, is still ultimately a structure that lacks the syntactic projection of the internal argument. My proposal requires: 1) that composition between an incorporee and a main predicate is one of Predicate Modification, rather than Chung & Ladusaw (2004)’s Restrict; and 2) a trade-off between modification vs. direct saturation of an argument variable: a restricted variable must be bound by an operator, and cannot be directly saturated by any entity via Function Application, even if the entity is of a compatible semantic type.