The effects of focus on scope relations between quantifiers and negation in Korean

Abstract

This paper addresses the effects of focus-marking (i.e. nun-marking) on the scope of quantified expressions in Korean negation constructions and shows how these inform the analysis of Korean negation constructions generally. Specifically, highlighting the "Rigid Scope" properties of Korean (in contrast with English), focus-marking in Korean negation constructions eliminates quantifier/negative scope ambiguities. In all cases but one, a focus-marked element has scope over all others. The anomalous case involving contrastive focus of object universal quantifiers brings the semantics of quantifiers into opposition with the semantics of contrastive focus.