Alternation ‘Benefactive Alternation’ (Coded)

The benefactive alternation is a periphrasitically realised (see Brown et al. 2012) valency alternation of the applicative type where a verb's valency is augmented by one. It is generally used in situations where somebody does something for the benefit of someone else, or where someone does something on behalf of someone else (but again, for the benefit of this person). Following Creissels (2010: 30/31) definition, such a 'benefactive applicative periphrasis' is an applicative alternation that licenses beneficiary roles in particular. As Creissels (2010: 35) further explains, a "benefactive NP is licensed by a word that also occurs with a related meaning in constructions in which it clearly has the status of a verb."; Indeed, the benefactive periphrasis in Korean is built through a complex predicate that consists of a converb and the verb juda 'give' (and its imperative and honorific counterparts which will not be discussed here, see Sohn 1999: 384ff.), which makes it structurally similar to other auxiliary verb constructions in Korean. In terms of the grammaticalisation of this biverbal construction as a monoclausal construction, Sohn (1999: 384) argues that juda with its NOM-DAT-ACC coding frame has lost its ability to independently assign semantic roles, although his evidence cannot be regarded as providing the full picture. The present dataset suggests that only transitive verbs with the coding frame NOM-ACC can undergo this alternation (but this might rather be due to the very narrow understanding of a syntactic benefactive alternation here, see discussion below), resulting in a NOM-DAT-ACC coding frame in the benefactive, and looking at ex. 306 one might assume that the ditransitive case frame alternates with a double accusative case frame. SING might be the only candidate to show that an intransitive verb can undergo this alternation as well, although syntactically it is not sure whether this verb is actually intransitive or not, due to its structural properties (see entry on SING). When a complex predicate is built using juda, three effects can be identified: 1. an overtly dative-marked NP can appear in the clause (COVER, CUT, TIE, POUR, CARRY, SEARCH) 2. an additional NP appears governed by the postposition wihaeseo 'for' or daesin(haeseo) 'on behalf of' (EAT, WASH, RECEIVE among others) 3. there is no syntactic change, and neither a dative-marked NP nor a postpositional NP can appear. (HUG, WASH (bath) someone, SIT DOWN, HELP and practically all intransitive verbs). The last case is true with ditransitive verbs, and occurs with a lot of causative verbs that are not normally used on their own (see SHOW for example). Curiously however, for a decent number of the verbs in the present data set it seems that such a complex predicate with juda is highly preferred in spoken usage as oppposed to the 'simple' form, and as a speaker who grew up with spoken Korean only, I have indicated that some verbs sound plain wrong without the verb juda (see SHOW (visually) or HELP). As you can see in the list of verbs, only a handful of verbs allows for an additional, dative-marked NP to appear in the clause when the benefactive alternation is applied. Creissels (2010: 49) discusses Shibatani's (2003: 282-3, see Creissels 2012 for references) idea's regarding an apparently very simialr observation made in Japanese, and argues that "in Japanese, intransitive verbs, or transitive verbs whose object NP denotes an object that is not normally transferred to a beneficiary cannot occur in a BAP [benefactive applicative periphrasis] including an overtly expressed beneficiary". Shibatani (2003: 282-3, cited in Creissels 2010: 49) specifies this 'transferral' as a "transfer of possessive control" which is not necessarily the same as the transfer of an object. Looking at the explanation above, one might understand better why even verbs such as TIE or CARRY can undergo a benefactive alternation in Korean, since objects are not transferred per se here, but rather the possessive control over an object. However, most studies on benefactives in Korean reduce the description to a dichotomy where there are only complex predicate constructions involving juda that either allow for an overtly expressed dative NP or not. As mentioned above, an apparently much more frequent possibility is expressing the beneficiary in a postpositional phrase (see ex. 176), or not expressing the beneficiary at all. For the latter case, I have included some examples which have been linked to verbs which have been checked for 'never' regarding this alternation. Examples such as ex. 349 might be a hint towards a differentiation between a 'semantic' benefactive applicative periphrasis and a 'syntactic' one in terms of the actual correspondence between syntactic exponence and semantic content of an expression. Obviously, I can only 'nudge' to spark some criticism and elucidation here, and would be grateful if the present discussion could lead to research that focuses on this construction alone. The only paper in English that I know of is Shibatani (1994, focusing on semantic valency properties and their comparison between Japanese and Korean), and a much more detailed investigation is desirable.