Perspective Shift with Korean Motion Verbs

Abstract

Many linguistic phenomena are reported to be sensitive to perspective, including predicates of personal taste, epithets, and motion verbs. A number of grammatical mechanisms for perspective shift have been proposed, including indexical shift (Korotkova 2016,Oshima 2006a,Sudo 2018), logophoricity (Charnavel 2018, Nishigauchi 2014, Speas & Tenny 2003, Sundaresan 2020), and anaphoricity (Anderson 2021b, Barlew 2017). In this paper, we provide experimental evidence about the behavior of a class of perspectival expressions in Korean: perspectival motion verbs. We explore the interpretation of ota ’come‘ in attitude contexts and find that while all attitude verbs license shifted readings, they are near-obligatory in embedded imperatives, and more available with null subjects. We argue that these data are most consistent with a logophoric account.