Scenarios and Schemas in Tandem: Explaining Polysemy in English ‐ er and Korean ‐ i

This article proposes a hybrid framework that merges Panther & Thornburg's Scenario Model (SM) with Relational Morphology (RM) to account for the contrasting polysemy of English ‐er and Korean ‐ i . We propose that SM first flags whichever participant roles the discourse treats as salient. RM then stores every role that speakers actually conventionalize, representing each as a daughter schema in the existing lattice. Because all ‐ er daughters inherit the same phonology and morphosyntax from the mother schema, Agent and non‐Agent readings are equally motivated; which ones persist depends on discourse usefulness, not structural cost. For ‐i , speakers rapidly lexicalize an EVENT‐centered schema that inherits the suffix's fixed form. From this event hub, additional participant‐role daughters can be motivated with virtually no extra structural machinery, yielding a broader and more evenly populated polysemy.