Thèse soutenue

Etats inchoatifs (de degré) en coréen dans le langage enfantin
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Auteur / Autrice : Jiyoung Choi
Direction : Hamida DemirdacheOrin Percus
Type : Thèse de doctorat
Discipline(s) : Sciences du langage
Date : Soutenance en 2015
Etablissement(s) : Nantes
Ecole(s) doctorale(s) : École doctorale Sociétés, Cultures, Echanges (SCE) (Angers)
Partenaire(s) de recherche : autre partenaire : Université Nantes-Angers-Le Mans - COMUE (2009-2015)

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Résumé

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This dissertation investigates the meaning of so-called inchoative states (INSs) in Korean (e. G. Nulk'old') that do not fit into Vendler (1967)'s aspectual classification, in that they show properties of both atelic (states) and telic (change-of-state) predicates. Building on Bar-el (2005), this dissertation proposes that INSs in Korean are semantically complex predicates describing a sequence of two events, one that is a change of state of the kind an achievement would describe, immediately followed by a second that is an eventuality of the kind a typical state would describe. Crucially, the change-of-state event constitutes the prior change bringing the state about. Moreover, INSs in Korean break down into two classes : INSs vs. Degree INSs. Drawing a parallel with degree achievements (DA) in English, the following claim is put forth : the property described by a degree INS becomes instantiated to at least the minimal value that counts as having the property in question. On its telic construal, a degree INS in Korean is thus interpreted as 'become S' (Kearns2007), but not as a 'become maximally S' (Hay et al. 1999), unlike a DA. Three experiments are designed and carried out to investigate Korean children's knowledge of the meaning of (degree) INSs : (i) a preference task ; (ii) a truth value judgment task and (iii) a grammaticality judgment task. The results show that, by about 4 years of age, children can generally distinguish (degree) INS from stative predicates as well as from achievements. The experimental studies thus provides novel experimental evidence from Korean child language for the claim that (degree) INS constitute a distinct class of predicates with rspect to Vendler's four-way classification.