The unembeddability of imperatives in Korean: Two different types of imperative morphology

1 Introduction

Han (1998: 113–4) argues that imperatives cannot be embedded in Korean (see also Sadock and Zwicky 1985, Rivero and Terzi 1995, among many others), as shown in (1) below (from Han 1998: 187).

Han claims that the sharp contrast in grammaticality between (1a) and (1b) attests to the fact that the imperative is unembeddable in the language.

However, the unembeddability of Korean imperatives is complicated by the fact that it is possible that another similar particle occurs in embedded clauses, as demonstrated in (2) (taken from Portner (2007: 13) with minor romanization modifications; the grammaticality judgment is attributed to Miok Pak).

The imperative particles -ala in (1) and -la in (2) look alike but are not identical. More interestingly, the -la can appear in the main clause (as well as in the embedded clause), as shown in (3) below.

This leads some linguists to the conclusion that Korean allows embedded imperatives (see, e.g., Platzack 2007, Portner 2007, Pak 2008, Lee 2012, and Lee and Park 2014, among others). In this article, I argue that the language at stake employs two different types of imperative particles: specifically, -(a)la is a bona fide imperative particle that may only occur in main clauses, while -(u)la simply serves as a clause-type marker that may only appear in embedded clauses. This constitutes substantive support for the fact that imperatives are unembeddable in the language.

2 Two different types of imperative morphology

3 Theoretical implications

Thus far, we have attested that -(a)la/-nela/-kela/-lyem only occur in main clauses – that is, they are unembeddable – whereas -(u)la appears in embedded contexts, as summarized in (11) below.

This fact, illustrated in (11), can be explained straightforwardly if it is assumed that -(a)la/-nela/-kela/-lyem make up the bona fide imperative morphology that bears directive illocutionary force (Han 1998), while -(u)la is simply a clause-type marker with no illocutionary force. Suppose that the main imperative morphology is an illocutionary force indicator of imperatives, which is syntactically encoded in the discourse-related domain of the clause, Speech Act Phrase (SAP), as illustrated in (12) below (see Haegeman 2014, Haegeman and Hill 2010, Pak 2008, Speas 2004, Speas and Tenny 2003, and Tenny 2006, among others).

(12)

SAP can best be understood as a syntactic projection that is involved with the performative acts and that encodes the directive illocutionary force of imperatives. In this view, the -(a)la/-nela/-kela/-lyem particles are exponents of the SA head. It is reasonable to assume that the -a morpheme in -(a)la that indicates the presence of addressee is associated with SAP.

By way of contrast, the embedded imperative morphology only marks the clause-type of the embedded clause in which it appears: -(u)la indicates that the event of the embedded sentence is not realized at the referent time (i.e., the event time of its matrix clause), and that it can occur in the future with respect to the referent time. In this view, -(u)la simply refers to “the modality of unrealized interpretation” (Han 1998) and, that being the case, it is reasonable to conclude that it is not associated with the discourse pragmatic domain of clausal structures like SAP: hence, it can be assumed to be an exponent of the Mood head below SAP (Lee 2015, Whitman 1990).

One of the most important advantages of the present analysis is that it accounts for the unembeddability of -(a)la/-nela/-kela/-lyem that reside on SAP. Such unembeddability follows in a straightforward manner from Ross’s (1970) analysis of “implicit performatives,” which states:

Of particular interest is that the implicit performative structure, equivalent to SAP under the present analysis, only occurs in the “highest” or root clause; that is, it is unembeddable. That being the case, the Speech Act projection is the only possible locus for the main imperative morphology. Note also that from the fact that SAP is only available in root clauses, it follows that direct exponents of that head, such as -(a)la/-nela/-kela/-lyem, cannot appear in embedded clauses.

To sum up, Korean employs two different types of imperative morphology: -(a)la/-nela/-kela/-lyem for root imperatives and -(u)la for embedded imperatives. Only the main imperative particles have directive illocutionary force, and consequently, they comprise a direct morphological realization of the Speech Act head that is only present in a root clause. The embedded imperative particle has no illocutionary force, and only labels the clause-type of the clause in which it appears; hence, it resides below performative SAP.

An anonymous reviewer asks about the propositive marker -ca. A full discussion of it is beyond the scope of the article. I conjecture a possible extension of the current view to propositives. Just like imperatives, there are two different types of propositives in the language. First of all, -psita “let’s[formal],” -sey “let’s[familiar],” and -cakkwuna “let’s[intimate]” never occur in embedded clauses. That being the case, they are associated with SAP. However, -ca seems to be problematic since it can occur both in main and in embedded clauses. My assumption is that the propositive particle in question accidentally has the same form for both cases. That is, there are two different -ca’s: One is an SA head and the other is Mood only. I leave this for future research.