The Interpretation of Extrinsic Plural Marker

This study investigates the use and interpretation of the extrinsic plural marker (EPM) -tul by adult native speakers of Korean. Unlike the intrinsic plural marker (IPM), which attaches exclusively to nominal stems, the EPM displays greater syntactic flexibility, occurring on direct objects, adverbs, nominalized verbs, and complementizers. Sentences containing the EPM yield two distinctive interpretations: distributivity and maximality. To examine whether the EPM contributes a systematic maximizing effect, a truth-value judgment task was administered to twenty adult Korean speakers. Participants evaluated the truth of EPM-containing sentences in relation to contextually grounded visual or narrative stimuli. The results indicate that participants consistently derived the maximality interpretation when appropriate contextual cues were provided. These findings indicate that Korean adult speakers have fully acquired the semantic contribution of the EPM and integrate it systematically into sentence interpretation. The study highlights the EPM’s role in expressing plural semantics beyond nominal domains and advances our understanding of Korean morphosyntax and the semantics–syntax interface.