Seongha Rhee

           Attribution of Human Qualities to Non-Humans: A Look into Human Construal of Events
This paper presents instances of grammaticalization of certain lexemes denoting human properties, showing how 'subjectification' works as an enabling mechanism of semantic change in grammaticalization, and discusses the implications of these states of affairs on the nature of human conceptualization. Korean has diverse grammatical markers, developed from lexemes that encode human attributes, whose use is not limited to humans but also non-humans such as animals, inanimates, and even abstract entities such as events and propositions (cf. 'personification').
           Among the prominent cases of animacy attribution is the grammaticalization of conative lexemes, such as purposive -lyeko 'in order to.' This marker can be used in speaking of a tilted building, "The building is about to collapse" (proximative aspect), whose literal meaning, in fact, is "The building tries to do (something) in order to collapse." A look into its grammaticalization path shows a series of metonymic transition from volitive human agent to non-volitive human experiencer, to inanimate active entity, and further to inanimate passive entity.
Another interesting grammaticalization phenomenon involves the verb of desideration such as siph- 'want', which also developed into markers of grammatical notions, as exemplified by "The boat is (feared to be) at the verge of being overturned" from "The boat wishes to overturn."
           Of significant findings in the analysis of these grammaticalization phenomena are: (i) that humans tend to attribute human qualities, animacy and conation, in particular, to non-human entities, through subjectification; (ii) that changes occur gradually in micro-structure and often constitute inter-domain change through cumulative small-step metonymic changes (cf. post hoc metaphor); and (iii) that resultant semantic characteristics, though often appear to be vastly irrelevant to the source semantics, tend to carry the traces of the original semantics, especially when viewed through schematic organization of the source lexemes.