Concealed passives and the syntax and semantics of need/philyo in English and Korean

Abstract

Despite similar argument structure, the syntax of English need and Korean philyo contrasts, illuminating differences in lexical derivation and insertion of argument-taking elements. Verbs need, require, deserve, want, and bear take gerundive complements that are "understood passively" (Jesperson 1927/1954:112[9.23]) and called concealed passive constructions (CPCs) (Huddleston and Pullum 2002:1429). In this paper, we argue that in English, the gerund CPC object of need is a lexically passivized V that takes a nominalizing derivational -ing affix, whereas in Korean, the CPC object of philyo is a verbal noun, directly inserted as a complement of the verb without derivation.