Distinct Enough for the Category of Korean Adjectives

The paper seeks to reinforce the standard view of an independent category for Korean adjectives. Korean adjectives share many properties with verbs, including the use of the same conjugation for tense and honorific, and the requirement to occur in a relative clause to modify a noun. These similarities have led some to treat adjectives as stative verbs or unaccusative verbs. The paper challenges the treatment of Korean adjectives as stative verbs, by exemplifying the contrasts of the compatibility with the present tense morpheme –nun/n, distinctive relativizers –nun and -(u)n, the ability to function as the complement of ~ko sipta ‘want to’, and the ability to assign the accusative case to the second argument. Furthermore, the paper refutes the treatment of Korean adjectives as unaccusative verbs, and illustrates the contrasts between Korean unaccusative verbs and adjectives. Unaccusative verbs cannot combine with –eci despite transitive verbs can. On the other hand, Korean adjectives can be combined with –eci and form A–eci construction to create inchoatives.