cs.CLFeb 17, 2026

A Curious Class of Adpositional Multiword Expressions in Korean

Authors: Junghyun Min, Na-Rae Han, Jena D. Hwang, Nathan Schneider

Organizations: Georgetown University · University of Pittsburgh · Allen Institute for AI

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Abstract

Multiword expressions (MWEs) have been widely studied in cross-lingual annotation frameworks such as PARSEME. However, Korean MWEs remain underrepresented in these efforts. In particular, Korean multiword adpositions lack systematic analysis, annotated resources, and integration into existing multilingual frameworks. In this paper, we study a class of Korean functional multiword expressions: postpositional verb-based constructions (PVCs). Using data from Korean Wikipedia, we survey and analyze several PVC expressions and contrast them with non-MWEs and light verb constructions (LVCs) with similar structure. Building on this analysis, we propose annotation guidelines designed to support future work in Korean multiword adpositions and facilitate alignment with cross-lingual frameworks.

Figures & tables

AdpositionBound stemMeaningSuffix forms with 하다 hata inflections
-에 ey ; oblique대 tayabout-한 han , -해 hay , -해서 hayse , -하여 haye
-에 ey의 uiby-한 han , -해 hay , -해서 hayse , -하여 haye
-를 lul ; accusative통 thongvia, through-한 han , -해 hay , -해서 hayse , -하여 haye
-를 lul위 wifor-한 han , -해 hay , -해서 hayse , -하여 haye
-로 lo; dative인 indue to-한 han , -해 hay , -해서 hayse , -하여 haye
-에 ey관 kwanabout-한 han , -해 hay , -해서 hayse , -하여 haye
Table 1: Non-exhaustive list of distributional properties of 14 Korean PVCs, in order of frequency in Korean Wikipedia. Additional adpositions and suffix forms are possible for select arguments as described in section 4 . -해 -hay , -해서 hayse , -하여 haye are resultative connective suffixes; -하고 hako is an conjunctive connective suffix; -한 han is an adnominal suffix. † Unlike others, these bound stems can serve as the main predicate in a sentence, as discussed in section 4.1 .
FormsPVC-nPVC-pverb + arg
Adnominal verb✓\checkmark✓\checkmark✓\checkmark
Main predicate ✓\checkmark †✓\checkmark
Adn. verb mod. ✓\checkmark †✓\checkmark
Conn. verb mod.  ✓\checkmark
Table 2: Grammaticality of 3 categories of constructions with a PVC-like surface form. PVCs with non-predicative verbs are the most lexicalized, only able to appear in adnominal (attributive) forms. † Predicative verbs that form PVCs may undergo modification or serve as the main predicate in a sentence, but with such change they no longer carry adpositional meaning and instead behave like a regular verb-argument construction.

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