Case Assignment in the Inalienable Possession Construction in Korean

In the Inalienable Possession Construction in Korean, the whole (possessor) and part (possessed) NPs typically agree in case. In this article, we argue that the apparent case-agreement is epiphenomenal. Investigation of verbs of various types that exhibit alternative case patterns reveals that the part-NP bears all and only the cases assigned by V to the relevant argument, whereas the whole-NP may bear either the case(s) assigned by V or nominative assigned by Infl, depending on its surface position. Thus the observed case-marking cannot be a consequence of case-agreement per se, but rather reflects direct case assignment by V and Infl independently to both part- and whole NPs. We call this the Direct Case Hypothesis. We further show that predication in small clause constructions is not marked by case-agreement in Korean, and suggest that case-agreement in this language is in fact limited to so-called Quantifier-floating. Finally, the evidence from case-marking is shown to shed light on the distinction between lexical versus syntactic passives.