The study on the -(u)m complement: Focusing on the semantic/pragmatic characteristics of nominalized complements in Korean

It has been widely discussed that there are several types of nominalized complements in Korean (e.g., -(u)m complement, -ki complement, (non-)truncated kes complements, etc.). Proposing that the way in which the content of each complement is updated to the common ground plays a central role in understanding their distribution, this paper discusses various novel properties of -(u)m complement. Specifically, we first show that accompanied with an indirect speech context, it requires an intermediate stage of update through the discourse move. We then discuss this property can also explain (i) why -(u)m complement should convey the epistemic modality and (ii) which types of attitude predicates are allowed to select it, in terms of the semantic compatibility. Along this line, we also try to figure out the reason why -ki complement exhibits the complementary characteristics compared to -(u)m complement. Taken together, it is claimed that the distinctive property of -(u)m complement, especially considering the context updating, provides a clearer understanding of related phenomena, such as the conditions on main clause negation, the nature of factivity, and its resemblance to the non-truncated kes complement type.