Morphosyntactic categorization of adjectives in KoreanKelih, Žan (Avtor) Ryu, Hyeonsook (Mentor) Živanović, Sašo (Mentor) Korean adjectiveszero morphemestative verbsmorphosyntaxdescriptive categoriesThe thesis examines the morphosyntactic status of Korean adjectives, whose extensive overlap with verbal morphology has sparked a longstanding debate between the Korean descriptive tradition, which recognizes them as a distinct part of speech, and the formaltypological tradition, which analyzes them as stative verbs with a zero present-tense morpheme (∅) in place of the overt -(neu)n- (Kim 2002). Rather than adjudicating between these positions, the thesis adopts Haspelmath's (2010) distinction between comparative concepts and descriptive categories and shows that the two camps are in fact answering different questions (Yi 2025). The central diagnostic, the nonpast declarative asymmetry, proves to be confined to a single paradigmatic slot, while other present-tense forms converge. The semantic background is explained by the role of intentionality and animacy (Yu 2013). The absence of comparative morphology extends to verbs and adverbs as well, via the general operator deo. Four problem predicates are examined in detail: the locative copulae, analyzed through honorific forms; the copula, which, based on distributional tests, aligns with the adjectival paradigm (Choe 2005); the suffix -eo ha- (Nam 2024), with its person-based and logophoric asymmetry; and the reinterpretation of the zero morpheme as an endophoric evidential marker of direct experience.[Ž. Kelih]20262026-09-30 07:16:13Diplomsko delo/naloga188877UDK: 81=531'06VisID: 634826COBISS_ID: 293084163sl