On the Ordering of Un/nun-marked Topics and Man-marked Foci in Korean

Abstract

The nominal particles un/nun and man are both categorized as semantic particles (pocosa) in Korean. Several studies have analyzed the semantic and syntactic properties of un/nun and man in isolation. However, the relations between un/nun and man have not yet been fully investigated. The present paper seeks to explore how un/nun and man interact in a particular way, focusing on their ordering relations. When an un/nun-marked NP precedes a man-marked NP, the sentence is always perceived as well-formed. On the other hand, when a man-marked NP precedes an un/nun-marked NP, the sentence is perceived as unnatural and uninterpretable. The particle un/nun marks a noun phrase as a contrastive topic or a noncontrastive topic, whereas man marks a noun phrase as a contrastive focus. When an un/nun-marked topic and a man-marked focus occur together in the same sentence, their syntactic distribution is restricted. While an un/nun-marked contrastive topic can precede a man-marked contrastive focus, a man-marked contrastive focus cannot precede an un/nun-marked contrastive topic due to the information-structural restriction which prohibits a contrastive focus to contain a contrastive topic in its domain of contrast. However, a man-marked contrastive focus can precede an un/nun-marked topic if interpreted noncontrastively in the subject position.