The copula as a nominative Case marker

Abstract

In Korean the morpheme /-I/ has conventionally been taken to be a copula, since it functions as a host for tense affixes when the predicate is a nominal. This chapter, however, argues that it is a nominative Case marker on the basis of morpho-phonological and syntactic evidence. First of all, /-I/ and the nominative Case marker are phonologically identical; second, they are in complementary distribution, and third, they are subject to the same distributional restrictions. On these grounds this chapter claims that the constituent that has been assumed to be a copula is an allomorph of the nominative Case marker. There are some apparent counterexamples to this claim, but this chapter shows that they turn out to be not genuine counterexamples.