The aim of this thesis is to study and describe semantic and syntactic characteristics of Korean motion verbs kata “go” and ota “come” as a part of V-V complex predicates, consisting of two verbs, separated only by a vowel morpheme. Based on their characteristics two distinct types of construction – compound motion verbs and auxiliary verb constructions can be observed. Compound motion verbs incorporate different semantic components of motion with kata and ota contributing their argument structure and full meaning, whose crucial feature is deixis. Compounds function as a morphological and syntactic whole, which means that its constituent verbs cannot be separated by grammatical elements. In auxiliary verb construction, however, kata and ota lose their lexical meaning and argument structure and act as auxiliaries, expressing abstract meaning of verbal aspect. The two constituent verbs in such a construction are not equal semantically and can be syntactically separated to a certain extent.
|