On the nature of concessivity in predicate focus: A study of sigma in Korean verb doubling and English verb phrase focus

This thesis studies verb doubling in Korean:;1. It aims to explain why we find implicit concessivity in only one configuration of verb doubling, i.e. contrastive verb doubling.;2. It argues that the features within the Sigma Phrase (Laka 1990) trigger the concessivity.;The corollary of this thesis is twofold:;1. It explains the deep syntactic symmetry between contrastive verb doubling and long form negation structures in Korean.;2. It expands on the analysis of VP focus in English.