Rethinking embeddability and context sensitivity inhonorification: evidence from Korean si

Abstract

Argument and addressee honorification in many languages show an embeddability asymmetry, where only argument honorification can be embedded. This aligns with a generalization that content-oriented markers are embeddable while utterance-oriented markers are not (Portner, Pak & Zanuttini 2019). While Korean shows a parallel asymmetry in its argument and addressee honorification markers, it has a non-canonical use of the argument honorification marker si where it functions as an addressee honorification marker while still being embeddable. These findings challenge the association between utterance sensitivity and embeddability. In order to bridge this gap, we analyze si as a variable-introducing honorific marker that targets an internal thematic argument of an event but maps the referent of that argument to a free variable to be fixed in the context. This analysis maintains the association between utterance sensitivity and embeddability because si is still content-oriented while the exceptional use as addressee honorification is derived indirectly via the coreference of some salient thematic argument of the event and the Addressee.