The Properties of Korean Reflexive Pronouns—Based on a Quantitative Analysis
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the distributional and functional differences among ‘caki, casin, and caki casin’ in the Korean sentences. In general, Korean reflexive ‘caki’ is known to be capable of both short-distance and long-distance binding, while ‘casin and caki casin’ seem to have a higher tendency to short-distance binding (Yang 1986, Hong 1986, Kim 2003 and others). On the other hand, it has been researched that ‘caki’ can be used to represent an antecedent such as a ‘statue’ depicting someone, but it can not be replaced by ‘casin, and caki casin’ (Lim 1987, Jackendoff 1992, Lidz 2001) In this paper, I discuss these issues in comparison with the characteristics of se-anaphor and self-anaphor in European languages. After these discussions, I will try to directly examine the examples cited in the research. Experiments were conducted with about 12 students who major in Korean language and 8 students do not, to examine whether the interpretations of the sentences in this study are correct.