Semantic Taxonomies and Tasi ‘Again’ in Korean

Juwon Lee

(Kyung Hee University)

https://doi.org/10.24303/lakdoi.2017.25.4.59

∣ Juwon Lee

Semantic Taxonomies and Tasi ‘Again’ in Korean ∣

Lee, Juwon. (2017). Semantic taxonomies and tasi ‘again’ in Korean. The Linguistic Association of Korea Journal, 25(4). 59-81. This article presents a new type of repetitive reading of the Korean adverb tasi 'again', and shows that the previous lexical or structural accounts of again cannot explain the new readings. As a solution to this problem, I propose two lexical entries of tasi 'again', the hypernymic tasi and the antonymic tasi, and argue that both entries can derive the repetitive readings (including the new readings) and restitutive readings, respectively. This account of the semantic phenomena shows an interaction between a semantic taxonomy and the lexical meaning of the adverb in Korean. Finally, I briefly discuss some similar data in English which suggest that a semantic taxonomy-based analysis is also needed for again in this language.

Key Words: repetitive reading, pseudo-repetitive reading, restitutive reading, tasi, again, semantic taxonomy, caused change-of-state verb

1. Introduction

The lexical meaning of again and its corresponding modifiers in other languages have been much studied in the literature (see English again in McCawley, 1968, 1971; Morgan, 1969; Dowty, 1979; Stechow, 1995, 2003; Beck & Johnson, 2004; Beck, 2005, 2006; Beck & Gergel, 2015; Pedersen, 2015, German wieder 'again' in Fabricius-Hansen, 1983, 2001; Stechow, 1996, 2003; Egg, 1999; Klein, 2001; Jäger and Blutner, 2003, and Korean tasi 'again' in Yoon, 1996, 2007; Oh, 2009, 2015, among others). In this paper, I introduce a new interpretation of the adverb tasi ‘again’ in Korean and investigate the systematic relation between semantic taxonomies and the interpretations of the adverb. Tasi ‘again’ has been considered to have the two types of readings, the repetitive reading and the restitutive reading, just like again in English (Yoon, 2007; Oh 2015). For instance, in (1) tasi ‘again’ is modifying the sentence (or the VP) headed by the caused change-of-state verb yel-ess-ta ‘opened’, which has a causative event structure, no matter whether the scale of the inherent result is durative or punctual (see Rappaport Hovav and Levin, 1998), and the whole sentence has the two kinds of readings which differ in the presuppositions (see also Yoon, 2007; Oh, 2015).

(1)	Tom-i mwun-ul tasi yel-ess-ta. Tom-Nom door-Acc again open-Pst-Dec ‘Tom opened the door again.’ 1. Repetitive reading: Entails that Tom opened the door, and presupposes that Tom had opened the door before. 2. Restitutive reading: Entails that Tom opened the door, and presupposes that the door had been open before.

In the repetitive reading of (1), the whole event of Tom opening the door is repeated, but in the restitutive reading, the state of the door's being open is repeated. Many prior works on the adverb in various languages deal with how to account for these two basic meanings (see section 2 for a brief review of the two main approaches to this problem).

In addition to these canonical readings, however, tasi ‘again’ can have a different interpretation. For example, in (2) the content of the presupposition of the second sentence is not associated with that of the sentence that tasi ‘again’ syntactically modifies, unlike the repetitive and restitutive readings given in (1).

(2)	[Context: Tom had never fried the potato before.] Tom-i ku kamca-lul kwu-wess-ko, Tom-Nom the potato-Acc bake-Pst-and tasi ku kamca-lul thwiki-ess-ta. again the potato-Acc fry-Pst-Dec (lit.) ‘Tom baked the potato, and he fried the potato again.’

The second sentence in (2) cannot have the typical repetitive reading due to the context; the assertion of the second sentence comes from the sentence that tasi ‘again’ modifies, but the presupposition of it seems to be specified by the first sentence. In short, the sentence that tasi ‘again’ syntactically modifies can be different from the sentence which is related to the presupposition of the adverb. This kind of reading has never been discussed in the literature to my best knowledge, and it cannot be accounted for by the previous approaches, whether they be lexical or structural, since they both assume that the basic content of the presupposition of the adverb comes from the overt expression that the adverb syntactically modifies. Thus the existence of this peculiar interpretation which I call pseudo-repetitive reading raises a number of questions about the nature of the lexical meaning of tasi ‘again’ and what conditions give rise to the reading. Regarding these issues, a semantic taxonomy-based analysis of tasi ‘again’ is proposed in this paper. I believe that this study would contribute to shedding light on the relation between the notion of semantic taxonomy and the lexical meaning of the adverb in addition to introducing the new type of readings in Korean.

In section 2, I first review the two main accounts of the semantics of English again, and point out that they must be modified so as to accommodate the new data of the adverb tasi 'again'. In section 3, a semantic taxonomy-based analysis of tasi is proposed; in particular, I show that the two lexical entries of tasi can correctly derive all the readings in question. Then I discuss some potential problems of the analysis and similar English data involving again in section 4 and 5, respectively. I conclude in section 6.

2. Prior Analyses of Again

In this section, I first give a brief description of the two previous analyses of again. It is shown, however, that they both are not enough to explain the pseudo-repetitive reading introduced above, and thus a new semantic theory of tasi 'again' incorporating the notion of semantic taxonomy is required to properly explain all the interpretations of the adverb under discussion.

I do not attempt to compare or contrast the two approaches in detail; only the main points of the analyses are presented here. This seems to suffice for the present purpose of this paper.

2.1. Lexical approach

In a lexical approach, the adverb again is lexically ambiguous between the repetitive again and the counterdirectional again (see Pedersen, 2015 for a scalar analysis of the reversal again): the former describes a repetition of the whole event denoted by a sentence leading to the repetitive reading, and the latter expresses a reversal of direction resulting in the restitutive reading (see Fabricius-Hansen, 1983, 2001; Kamp and Rossdeutscher, 1994; Jäger and Blutner, 2000). For instance, if again in (3) is the repetitive again, it is presupposed in the sentence that the temperature had risen before, but if it is the counterdirectional again, the same sentence presupposes that the temperature had fallen before (the example is from Beck, 2005: 15, (34)).

(3)	(The temperature was falling all morning.) Now it is rising again.

The two lexical meanings of again for the repetitive and restitutive readings can be indirectly defined as in the following (Beck, 2005: 15):

See Beck (2006) for a little bit more refined formalization of again, but the current one seems to be enough to express the main ideas of this paper. Hence, I adopt this formalization for a semantic taxonomy-based analysis of tasi 'again' proposed in section 3 below. Note also that P is predicate of events and the negation is assumed to scope only over P(e), since P(e) represents assertion, but the rest part presupposition; when the presupposition failure occurs, the sentence is assumed to have no truth value.

(4)	a.	[[again1]](P<i,t>)(e) = 1 iff P(e) & ∃e'[e' < e & P(e')] = 0 iff ∼ P(e) & ∃e'[e' < e & P(e')] undefined otherwise.
	b.	[[again2]](P<i,t>)(e) = 1 iff P(e) & ∃e'[e' < e & Pc(e') & respc(e') = prep(e)] = 0 iff ∼ P(e) & ∃e'[e' < e & Pc(e') & respc(e') = prep(e)] undefined otherwise.

A sentence with the repetitive again in (4a) asserts that P is true of an event, and presupposes that there is a preceding event which P is true of. But a sentence with the counterdirectional again in (4b) asserts that P is true of an event, and presupposes that there is a prior event which Pc (the counterdirectional predicate) of P is true of, and the result state (respc) of the counterdirectional predicate Pc is identical to the prestate (preP) of P. Equipped with the two lexical entries of again, we can formally represent the repetitive reading and the restitutive reading of (5a) as in (5b) and (5c), respectively (Beck, 2005: 15).

(5)	a.	The temperature is rising again.
	b.	The typical repetitive reading of (5a) = λe.risee(the_temp) & ∃e'[e' < e & risee'(the_temp)]
	c.	The restitutive/counterdirectional reading of (5a) = λe.risee(the_temp) & ∃e'[e' < e & falle'(the_temp) & respc(e') = prep(e)]

The verbal predicate in (5a) is atelic. If this analysis is applied to the sentence with the telic predicate in (6a), then the typical repetitive reading of the sentence can be represented as in (6b), and the restitutive reading as in (6c) (see Beck, 2005: 16):

(6)	a.	Sally opened the door again.
	b.	The typical repetitive reading of (6a) = λe.opene(the_door)(Sally) & ∃e'[e' < e & opene'(the_door)(Sally)]
	c.	The restitutive/counterdirectional reading of (6a) = λe.opene(the_door)(Sally) & ∃e'[e' < e & closee'(the_door)(Sally) & respc(e') = prep(e)]

In (6b), it asserts that Sally opened the door and presupposes that she had previously opened the door. But in (6c), it is asserted that Sally opened the door and it is presupposed that she had previously closed the door, and the result state of Sally’s closing the door is the same as the prestate of Sally’s opening the door.

In the counterdirectional reading, it is not necessary that it is Sally who had previously closed the door; a change-of-state of the door becoming closed is enough. Although Beck (2005: 16, footnote 10) notes that the details of this are ignored in his representation, this is an important motivation for taking only the change-of-state part of an antonymic predicate for the antonymic tasi 'again' proposed in section 3.2 below.

In the lexical approach to repetitive readings, however, the predicate P involved in the presupposition must be identical to the predicate P in the assertion, as represented in (4a). Thus this lexical analysis is unable to deal with the pseudo-repetitive reading of the sentence in (2), repeated in (7).

(7)	[Context: Tom had never fried the potato before.] Tom-i ku kamca-lul kwu-wess-ko, Tom-Nom the potato-Acc bake-Pst-and tasi ku kamca-lul thwiki-ess-ta. again the potato-Acc fry-Pst-Dec (lit.) ‘Tom baked the potato, and he fried the potato again.’

More specifically, the typical repetitive reading of the second sentence in (7) amounts to (8) under the assumption that tasi 'again' in the sentence is the repetitive again from (4a).

(8)	The typical repetitive reading of the second sentence in (7) = λe.frye(the_potato)(Tom) & ∃e'[e' < e & frye'(the_potato)(Tom)]

(8) can surely describe a repetition of the whole event of Tom’s frying the potato, but not the situation which the speaker intended to be described by the second sentence in (7). Summarizing, if the lexical analysis of again is extended to tasi 'again', it cannot capture all the possible repetitive meanings of the Korean adverb. The same problem is also found in the structural analysis of again, which I turn to next.

2.2. Structural approach

The basic idea of the structural account is that again is not ambiguous, but has only one meaning, repetition (see e.g. Stechow, 1995, 1996, 2003; Klein, 2001; Pittner, 2003). The repetitive reading arises when again is syntactically attached to the constituent representing the whole event structure, so what is repeated is the whole event, and the restitutive reading arises if again is syntactically attached to the constituent representing the result state, so what is repeated is the result state. For instance, Stechow (1995) proposes that the Logic Form (LF) in (9b) is assigned to the resultative construction in (9a). In (9b) the object ‘the metal’ moves to the front of the structure to bind the empty pronominal subject of the small clause, and the verb hammered combines with a small clause and then with an object (Beck, 2005: 6-8).

(9)	a.	Sally hammered the metal flat.
	b.	[[the metal] [1[VP Sally [V' t1 [V' hammered [SC PRO1 flat] ]]]] → λe.hammere(the_metal)(S) & ∃e'[BECOMEe'(λe''.flate''(the_metal)) & CAUSE(e')(e)]

The analysis of the resultative sentence allows us to capture both the readings of (10a) below. The resultative LF in (9b) contains two propositional categories that could be modified by again: the entire VP or just the small clause ‘PRO flat.’ In other words, the ambiguity arises due to the scopal ambiguity of again. Using principle (R) (see details of this in Stechow, 1995; Beck, 2005), the two structures of (10a) can be interpreted as (10b) and (10c) (‘t_m’ stands for the referent of ‘the metal’) (see Beck, 2005, 2006).

(10)	a.	Sally hammered the metal flat again.
	b.	[VP [the metal] [1[VP [VP Sally [V' t1 [V' hammered [SC PRO1 flat] ]] again]]] → λe''.againe''(λe.hammere(t_m)(S) & ∃e'[BECOMEe'(λe*.flate*(t_m)) & CAUSE(e')(e)])
	c.	[VP [the metal] [1[VP Sally [V' t1 [V' hammered [SC [SC PRO1 flat] again]]]]] → λe.hammere(t_m)(S) & λe'[BECOMEe'(λe''.againe''(λe*.flat*(t_m)) & CAUSE(e')(e)])

In (10a), it means that “once more, Sally’s hammering the metal caused it to become flat” (Beck, 2005: 14), and in (10b) it means that “Sally’s hammering the metal caused it to become once more flat” (Beck, 2005: 14). It is assumed that again has the meaning in (11), which is basically the same as the repetitive again in (4a) of the lexical approach (see Beck, 2005).

(11)	[[again]](P<i,t>)(e) = 1 iff P(e) & ∃e'[e' < e & P(e')] = 0 iff ∼ P(e) & ∃e'[e' < e & P(e')] undefined otherwise.

In sum, again has the constant meaning according to the structural approach, and the two different readings are derived from the two different syntactic modification of again (see the same line of analysis in Dowty, 1979: 261, suggesting the scopal ambiguity of again).

However, the assumption of this structural account is that the source of the repetition comes from the constituent that again modifies. So, for instance, if the structural analysis is applied to the second sentence in (7), its typical repetitive reading should be represented like the following:

(12)	The typical repetitive reading of the second sentence in (7) = λe''.againe''(λe.frye(the_potato)(Tom) & ∃e'[BECOMEe'(λe*.friede*(the_potato)) & CAUSE(e')(e)])

(12) cannot capture the pseudo-repetitive reading due to the same problem that the lexical analysis suffers from. Hence, the existence of the pseudo-repetitive reading definitely calls for a new analysis of tasi 'again'.

3. A Semantic Taxonomy-based Analysis of Tasi ‘Again’

It has been shown that both the previous accounts in the literature must be somehow modified to accommodate the new meaning of tasi 'again'. In this section, I propose a semantic taxonomy-based analysis of tasi 'again' which is able to cover the pseudo-repetitive readings, as well as typical repetitive and restitutive readings. Note first that the lexical ambiguity of tasi 'again' from lexical approach is adopted here, but some notion of lexical decomposition from structural approach is also used for a representation of the semantic taxonomy-based analysis. This choice is only for expository purposes; I do not attempt here to argue for or against either of the two approaches to the adverb.

3.1. The hypernymic analysis of repetitive readings

What is important in the pseudo-repetitive reading is that the predicate in the assertion is different from the predicate in the presupposition. However, it is not that they are completely different from each other. For example, the verbs thwiki- 'fry' and kwup- 'bake' describe a cooking. According to the WordNet, fry is assumed to be a sister of bake in the semantic taxonomy of bake, and vice versa. Assuming that the corresponding Korean verbs are also sisters to each other, we can observe the generalization that a sister of the predicate that tasi 'again' modifies in a sentence can be the predicate of the presupposition of the sentence, and this is supported by the following additional examples (and many other sentences with manner-of-cooking verbs).

(13)	a.	[Context: Tom had never fried the potato before.] Tom-i ku kamca-lul cci-ess-ko, Tom-Nom the potato-Acc steam-Pst-and tasi ku kamca-lul thwiki-ess-ta. again the potato-Acc fry-Pst-Dec (lit.) ‘Tom steamed the potato, and Tom fried the potato again.’
	b.	[Context: Tom had never fried the potato before.] Tom-i ku kamca-lul salm-ass-ko, Tom-Nom the potato-Acc boil-Pst-and tasi ku kamca-lul thwiki-ess-ta. again the potato-Acc fry-Pst-Dec (lit.) ‘Tom boiled the potato, and Tom fried the potato again.’

Assuming that Tom had never fried the potato, the following clause in (13a) can be applied to the situation where Tom had previously steamed the potato, and later he fried the potato, and similarly for the second clause in (13b). The lexical meaning of tasi 'again' in (14) can be then proposed to account for the pseudo-repetitive readings adapting the formalization of Beck (2005).

(14)	[[tasisis]](P<i,t>)(e) = 1 iff P(e) & ∃e'[e' < e & Psis(e')] = 0 iff ∼ P(e) & ∃e'[e' < e & Psis(e')] undefined otherwise. (Psis is a sister predicate of P)

With (14), the pseudo-repetitive reading of Tom-i kamca-lul tasi thwiki-ess-ta 'Tom fried the potato again' can be represented like the following:

(15)	a.	P = λe.frye(the_potato)(Tom)
	b.	The pseudo-repetitive reading of Tom-i kamca-lul tasisis thwiki-ess-ta 'Tom fried the potato again' = λe.frye(the_potato)(Tom) & ∃e'[e'<e & Psis(e')]

Psis in (15b) can be specified by any sister predicate of P. That is, (15b) can be applied to the situations that the two sentences in (13) describe. However, a theoretical problem of this approach is that we need to posit the pseudo-repetitive tasi in (14) as well as the typical repetitive tasi like (11). To solve this problem, I propose a more generalized account below. First, note that an important fact about a semantic taxonomy is that if Psis is a sister of P, then P is also a sister of Psis. This automatically means that Psis and P share an immediate hypernym. For instance, Tom fried the potato and Tom baked the potato share the immediate hypernym, Tom cooked the potato, since cook is the immediate hypernym of fry and bake. Based on this property, I propose the hypernymic tasi in (16), instead of the pseudo-repetitive tasi in (14).

The hypernym-hyponym relation normally holds between words, but it is assumed here that the relation also holds between sentences. Since the set of events described by Tom cooked the potato include the events expressed by Tom fried the potato, it is plausible to consider the former as a "hypernym" of the latter.

As a reviewer pointed out, it may be better to clearly distinguish assertion from presupposition in the framework of dynamic semantics. As mentioned above, however, the current formalization seems to be enough to express the core idea of this paper, so I leave it to future research.

(16)	[[tasihyper]](P<i,t>)(e) = 1 iff P(e) & ∃e'[e' < e & Phyper(e')] = 0 iff ∼ P(e) & ∃e'[e' < e & Phyper(e')] undefined otherwise. (Phyper is a immdeiate hypernym of P)

The hypernymic tasi in (16) can account for both the typical repetitive and pseudo-repetitive readings, as illustrated in (17).

(17)	a.	P = λe.frye(the_potato)(Tom)
	b.	Phyper = λe.cooke(the_potato)(Tom)
	c.	The hypernymic reading of Tom-i kamca-lul tasihyper thwiki-ess-ta 'Tom fried the potato again' = λe.frye(the_potato)(Tom) & ∃e'[e'<e & cooke'(the_potato)(Tom)]

(17c) can be applied to the typical repetitive situation where Tom had previously fried the potato, and later he fried the potato, and to a pseudo-repetitive context in which Tom had previously baked (or boiled or steamed) the potato, and later he fried the potato.

If an adverb modifies a sentence, then the modified sentence is semantically more specific than the sentence itself. In terms of semantic taxonomy, the modified sentence would be an immediate hyponym of the unmodified sentence. Thus, it seems plausible to assume that Bella read the paper carefully is an immediate hyponym of Bella read the paper. In addition, Bella skimmed the paper would be an immediate hyponym of Bella read the paper, since skim is an immediate hyponym of read according to the WordNet. In other words, Bella read the paper carefully should be a sister of Bella skimmed the paper. Assuming that this semantic taxonomy also holds in Korean, it is predicted that Bella-ka ku nonmwun-ul caseyhi ilk-ess-ta 'Bella read the paper carefully' can satisfy the presuppositional content of Bella-ka tasi ku nonmwun-ul hwulthepo-ass-ta 'Bella skimmed the paper again'. This is borne out in (18).

(18)	Bella-ka ku nonmwun-ul caseyhi ilk-ess-ko, Bell-Nom the paper-Acc carefully read-Pst-and Bella-ka tasi ku nonmwun-ul hwulthepo-ass-ta. Bella-nom again the paper-Acc skim-Pst-Dec 'Bella read the paper carefully, and Bella skimmed the paper again.'

The second sentence in (18) can be formalized in the current system as follows:

(19)	a.	P = λe.skime(the_paper)(Bella)
	b.	Phyper = λe.reade(the_paper)(Bella)
	c.	The hypernymic reading of Bella-ka tasihyper ku nonmwun-ul hwulthepo-ass-ta 'Bell skimmed the paper again' = λe.skime(the_paper)(Bella) & ∃e'[e'<e & reade'(the_paper)(Bella)]

The hypernymic interpretation in (19c) can be also applied to the typical repetitive situation, of course. Due to the linguistic context (the preceding sentence) in (18), the second sentence is likely to be taken as a description of the pseudo-repetitive situation, but this is not a requirement for the sentence.

3.2. The antonymic analysis of restitutive readings

It has been argued above that the two types of repetitive readings can be derived by the hypernymic tasi. I show here that the restitutive/counterdirectional reading can be also dealt with in a similar fashion. Consider the restitutive reading in (1), repeated in (20).

(20)	Tom-i mwun-ul tasi yel-ess-ta. Tom-Nom door-Acc again open-Pst-Dec ‘Tom opened the door again.’ 1. Repetitive reading: Entails that Tom opened the door, and presupposes that Tom had opened the door before. 2. Restitutive reading: Entails that Tom opened the door, and presupposes that the door had been open before.

Since it seems to be implausible to open a door which is already open, it is also presupposed in the restitutive reading in (20) that the door became closed before Tom opened the door. An important relation between open in the assertion and close in the presupposition is that they are the antonym to each other (see a similar point in Pedersen, 2015). Based on this observation, I propose the antonymic tasi 'again' in (21).

In this paper restitutive reading has been assumed to be identical to counterdirectinal reading. The presupposition of the restitutive reading of Jane opened the door again is that the door had been open before, and the presupposition of the counterdirectional reading of the same sentence is that the door had become closed. In the restitutive reading, it is implicit that the door had become closed, since it is implausible for Jane to open the door which is already open, and in the counterdirectional reading, it is implicit that the door had been open before, since it is not plausible for the door which is already closed to become closed. So what is presupposed in restitutive or counterdiretional reading seems to be basically the same.

(21)	[[tasianto]](P<i,t>)(e) = 1 iff P(e) & ∃e'[e' < e & C(Panto)(e')] = 0 iff ∼ P(e) & ∃e'[e' < e & C(Panto)(e')] undefined otherwise. (C(Panto) is the change-of-state part in the semantics of the antonymic predicate Panto of P)

In (21), C is taken to be the function that takes Panto, the antonym of P, and returns the change-of-state part in the meaning of Panto. For instance, the  restitutive interpretation of the sentence in (20) is represented as follows:

(22)	a.	P = λe.opene(the_door)(Tom)
	b.	Panto = λe.closee(the_door)(Tom)
	c.	C(Panto) = λe.become-closede(the_door)
	d.	The restitutive reading of Tom-i mwun-ul tasianto yel-ess-ta 'Tom opened the door again' = λe.opene(the_door)(Tom) & ∃e'[e'<e & become-closede'(the_door)]

In (22c), C(Panto) introduces the change-of-state part of Panto, whose decomposed event structure may be represented as in (23) (see the decomposition approach to the lexical semantics in Dowty, 1979; Jackendoff, 1990; Levin and Rappaport Hovav, 1995, among many others).

(23)	Panto = λe.causing-evente(the_door)(Tom) & ∃e'[BECOMEe'(λe*.closede*(the_door)) & CAUSE(e')(e)])

Based on the event structural decomposition in (23), the change-of-state subevent of the Panto can be represented as λe.become-closede(the_door). This is a simplified representation, but suffices for the purpose of this paper. With this, (22d) can describe the restitutive situation in which the door had become closed before, and then Tom opened the door. Another important point in the restitutive reading is that the door went through the change-of-state, but it is not necessary that the change-of-state is externally caused; this flexibility is reflected in C(Panto) by the specification only on the change-of-state.

In addition to the telic sentence in (20), the atelic sentence in (24) allows the restitutive reading:

(24)	Tom-i kwuk-ul tasi sikhi-ess-ta. Tom-Nom soup-Acc again cool-Pst-Dec ‘Tom cooled the soup again.’ 1. Repetitive reading: Entails that Tom cooled the soup, and presupposes that Tom had cooled the soup before. 2. Restitutive reading: Entails that Tom cooled the soup, and presupposes that the soup had been cool before.

The restitutive/counterdirectional reading in (24) entails that Tom cooled the soup and presupposes that the soup had become heated before. The semantics of this restitutive/counterdirectional reading can be represented like (25).

(25)	a.	P = λe.coole(the_soup)(Tom)
	b.	Panto = λe.heate(the_soup)(Tom)
	c.	C(Panto) = λe.become-heatede(the_soup)
	d.	The restitutive reading of Tom-i kwuk-ul tasianto sikhi-ess-ta 'Tom cooled the soup again' = λe.coole(the_soup)(Tom) & ∃e'[e'<e & become-heatede'(the_soup)]

One may argue that since cool and heat are also a sister to each other according to the WordNet, the hypernymic tasi in (16) can be used to derive the restitutive reading, as well. However, the antonym of a verb is not necessarily a sister of the verb: e.g. open is not a sister of close, and assemble is not a sister of disassemble in the WordNet. Furthermore, as mentioned above, restitutive readings do not require a caused change-of-state predicate in the presuppositions. For example, in the restitutive reading of Tom-i ku cip-ul tasi coliphay-ss-ta 'Tom assembled the house again', either the house had previously disassembled by itself or somebody had previously disassembled it. But this flexibility is not reflected in the hypernymic tasi, since its presupposition is always a caused change-of-state predicate if P is a caused change-of-state predicate. These further support the antonymic tasi in (21) distinct from the hypernymic tasi in (16).

As mentioned above, if a sentence is modified by an adverb, the combination is semantically more specific than the sentence itself. Thus a situation described by such a combination can be also described by the presupposition of the antonymic tasi, as shown in the following:

(26)	ku kwuk-i chenchenhi/ppalli sik-ess-ko, the soup-Nom slowly/quickly cool-Pst-and Tom-un ku kwuk-ul tasi teywu-ess-ta. Tom-Top the soup-Acc again heat-Pst-Dec 'The soup cooled slowly/quickly, and Tom heated the soup again.'

The antonymic reading of the second sentence in (26) has the presupposition, ∃e'[e' < e & become-coolede'(the_soup)], and this can be applied to the situation in which the soup had cooled slowly or quickly, as expected. Summarizing, the semantic taxonomy-based analysis of tasi 'again' can cover all the readings under discussion; the hypernymic tasi derives the repetitive readings (typical repetitive and pseudo-repetitive readings), and the antonymic tasi the restitutive/counterdirectional readings.

I do not argue that this antonymic analysis of restitutive/counterdirectional reading is superior to previous analyses in terms of empirical coverage, but the antonymic analysis is theoretically consistent with the hypernymic analysis of repetitive readings since they employ the semantic relations. If an analysis should incorporate semantic taxonomies in order to account for pseudo-repetitive readings, it seems better to employ the notion of semantic taxonomy to explain restitutive/counterdirectional readings as well.

4. Potential Counterexamples

It has been argued in this paper that the hypernymic tasi can give rise to the two types of the repetitive readings, typical repetitive and pseudo-repetitive readings, and the antonymic tasi can derive restitutive readings. In this section, I discuss some potential problems for this semantic taxonomy-based analysis of tasi 'again'.

In the WordNet, it is assumed that open and close have no direct hypernym and these verbs have no sister. If this assumption is really true and the corresponding Korean verbs have the same property, then it may be a problem for the hypernymic analysis of tasi 'again', according to which a hypernymic predicate (Phyper) of a predicate (P) is required to give rise to either of the two types of repetitive readings. Consider the following examples:

As a reviewer pointed out, not every semantic relation is specified in the WordNet, and probably the verb move is a hypernym of the verb open or close. However, it is not clear that move is really the immediate hypernym of the verbs. Since the meaning of move is very general than that of open or close, there may be a verb located between move and open (or close) in the semantic taxonomies. This issue requires further examination, and we should see whether the immediate hypernym, if any, can properly capture the hypernymic readings. In this paper I suggest a possible solution to the problem caused by the assumption that yel- 'open' or tat- 'close' has no immediate hypernym.

(27)	a.	The hypernymic reading of Bill-i mwun-ul tasihyper yel-ess-ta 'Bill opened the door again' = λe.opene(the_door)(Bill) & ∃e'[e'<e & Phyper(e')] = undefined
	b.	The hypernymic reading of Bill-i mwun-ul tasihyper tat-ass-ta 'Bill closed the door again' = λe.closee(the_door)(Bill) & ∃e'[e'<e & Phyper(e')] = undefined

Since Phyper in (27) is undefined, the sentences are wrongly predicted to be unable to have a repetitive reading; in fact they have their typical repetitive readings. As a solution to this problem, I assume that when a predicate has no hypernym, the predicate itself serves as the immediate hypernym of the predicate, though a predicate is not actually an immediate hypernym of the predicate. This assumption may sound nonsensical at first glance, but this is not very implausible considering that the set of events described by a predicate is a subset of the set of events described by its hypernym, and similarly the set of events described by a predicate is a subset of the set of events described by the same predicate. But when a predicate has an immediate hypernym, the predicate denotes a proper subset of the hypernym. Under this assumption, the hypernymic readings of the sentences in (27) can now be represented like the following:

(28)	a.	The hypernymic reading of Bill-i mwun-ul tasihyper yel-ess-ta 'Bill opened the door again' = λe.opene(the_door)(Bill) & ∃e'[e'<e & opene'(the_door)(Bill)]
	b.	The hypernymic reading of Bill-i mwun-ul tasihyper tat-ass-ta 'Bill closed the door again' = λe.closee(the_door)(Bill) & ∃e'[e'<e & closee'(the_door)(Bill)]

In this case, the hypernymic interpretations are the same as the typical repetitive interpretations, though normally the former is more general than the latter.

Another potential problem is the fact that a direct hypernym of assemble is create in the WordNet, and create has many other direct hyponyms, one of which is compose. In other words, compose is a sister of assemble in the semantic taxonomy. Then a composing situation should be covered by the presuppositional content of the hypernymic reading of Bill-i cip-ul tasi coliphay-ss-ta 'Bill assembled the house again'. But this is not true, as shown in the following:

(29)	[Context: Bill had never assembled the house before.] #Bill-i ku cip-ul cakkokhay-ss-ko, Bill-Nom the house-Acc compose-Pst-and Bill-i ku cip-ul tasi coliphay-ss-ta. Bill-Nom the house-Acc again assemble-Pst-Dec '#Bill composed the house, and Bill assembled the house again.'

However, this example does not cause a problem for the hypernymic tasi 'again', since the semantic implausibility in (29) is due to the independent reason, selectional restriction, that a house is not appropriate to be used as an argument of cakkokha- ‘compose'. In summary, the non-availability of a hypernym of yel- ‘open' or tat- 'close', or the existence of an inappropriate sister of colipha- 'assemble' does not really pose a problem for the semantic taxonomy-based analysis of tasi 'again'.

5. Extension to English Again

In this section, I introduce some similar data in English and briefly discuss the potential extension of the semantic taxonomuy-based analysis to English again. First, the adverb again in English can also give rise to some pseudo-repetitive readings, as exemplified in (30).

(30)	a.	[John had never skimmed the paper before.] John read the paper carefully, and later he skimmed the paper again.
	b.	[John had never read the paper carefully before.] John skimmed the paper, and later he read the paper carefully again.

The second sentences in (30) cannot have a typical repetitive reading due to the pragmatic contexts blocking the repetition of the same type of event. Instead, the pseudo-repetitive readings are available for them. This suggests that the presuppositional content of again in (30) should be more general than the contents of the sentences that again syntactically modifies.

Furthermore, the English manner-of-cooking verbs seem to allow pseudo-repetitive readings:

(31)	a.	[Context: Grace had never fried the potato before.] ‘Grace baked the potato, and she fried the potato again.’
	b.	[Context: Tom had never fried the potato before.] ‘Grace steamed the potato, and she fried the potato again.’

Although the sentences in (31) are not perfectly acceptable, they can be used in a certain situation. For instance, the sentence in (31a) can describe the situation in which Grace baked the potato, but it cooled, so Grace fried the potato to heat it up. Similarly, when Grace steamed the potato, but it cooled, and so Grace heated the potato up by frying it, the sentence in (31b) seems to be acceptable. The following examples may have the interpretations of the same kind:

There is a speaker-to-speaker variation on judgments of the data like (31); some never accept the data. For now I ignore the issue of why this variation occurs.

(32)	a.	[Context: Grace had never baked the potato before.] ‘Grace fried the potato, and she baked the potato again.’
	b.	[Context: Grace had never baked the potato before.] ‘Grace steamed the potato, and she baked the potato again.’

(33)	a.	[Context: Grace had never grilled the potato before.] ‘Grace baked the potato, and she grilled the potato again.’
	b.	[Context: Grace had never grilled the potato before.] ‘Grace steamed the potato, and she grilled the potato again.’

Again, the data of this sort shows that the previous lexical or structural analyses of again are not enough to properly predict the pseudo-repetitive readings in English.

Interestingly, however, the English manner-of-killing verbs never allow pseudo-repetitive readings (see a discussion regarding similar data in Beavers & Koontz-Garboden, 2012: 358):

(34)	a.	[Context: Taylor had never hung Jane before.] ‘Taylor electrocuted Jane, but Jane revived, #so Taylor hung Jane again.’
	b.	[Context: Taylor had never electrocuted Jane before.] ‘Taylor hung Jane, but Jane revived, #so Taylor electrocuted Jane again.’

(35)	a.	[Context: Taylor had never poisoned Jane before.] ‘Taylor electrocuted Jane, but Jane revived, #so Taylor poisoned Jane again.’
	b.	[Context: Taylor had never electrocuted Jane before.] ‘Taylor poisoned Jane, but Jane revived, #so Taylor electrocuted Jane again.’

By contrast, the corresponding Korean sentences of these examples seem to be acceptable. Consider the following examples:

(36)	a.	[Context: Taylor had never guillotined Jane before. Taylor poisoned Jane, but she revived.] Taylor-ka Jane-ul tasi tantwutay-lo cwuki-ess-ta. Taylor-Nom Jane-Acc again guillotine-Inst kill-Pst-Dec (lit.) 'Taylor guillotined Jane again.'
	b.	[Context: Taylor had never poisoned Jane before. Taylor guillotined Jane, but she revived.] Taylor-ka Jane-ul tasi toksalhay-ss-ta. Taylor-Nom Jane-Acc again poison-Pst-Dec (lit.) 'Taylor poisoned Jane again.'

These can be also accounted for by the hypernymic tasi 'again' since guillotining and poisoning are both killing event. In sum, Korean and English basically allow pseudo-repetitive readings, but they differ in how much pseudo-repetitive readings are allowed in the languages. This opens the possibility of extending the semantic taxonomy-based analysis to English again.

6. Conclusion

In this paper a new type of readings of tasi 'again' was introduced, and I have argued that the notion of semantic taxonomy should be incorporated in a proper analysis of tasi 'again'. Particularly the hypernymic again and the antonymic again were proposed to account for the repetitive readings (both the typical repetitive and pseudo-repetitive readings) and the restitutive/counterdirectional readings, respectively. This semantic phenomenon of tasi 'again' shows an important interaction of semantic taxonomy with the lexical meaning of the adverb. In addition to tasi 'again' in Korean, English again allows some pseudo-repetitive readings. This suggests that a semantic taxonomy-based analysis may be also required for again, though a more detailed cross-linguistic investigation is left for future work.

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Juwon Lee

School of English

Kyung Hee University

26, Kyungheedae-ro, Dongdaemun-gu,

Seoul 02447, Republic of Korea

Email: juwonlee@khu.ac.kr

Received on November 5, 2017

Revised version received on December 18, 2017

Accepted on December 31, 2017