A Phase-based Approach to ECM across CP in Korean

A Phase-Based Approach to ECM across CP in Korean Youngsun KIM Cornell University Dept. of Linguistics, Morrill Hall Ithaca, NY 14853, USA yk48@cornell.edu Abstract ECM across a CP in Korean poses difficulties from the standpoint of the locality of A-movement/agreement. A phase-based analysis is developed which requires two steps: (i) in the embedded CP, VP/vP containing its VP-internal subject first moves to Spec-CP, which renders the subject accessible to the matrix v, in accordance with Chomsky's Phase Impenetrability Condition; (ii) ECM takes place in a local relation between the matrix v and the embedded subject. It is shown that the otherwise puzzling fact that ECM across a CP, but not Passivization across a CP, is affected by the type of the embedded verb in Korean is accounted for in a principled way, based on the assumption that CP and vP, but not TP and VP, are phases. 1� Introduction It has been widely held that A-movement/agreement is strictly clause-bounded. A classical case which illustrates the locality of A-movement/agreement is the English ECM (Exceptional Case Marking) construction: ECM is possible across a TP (or IP) but it is impossible across a CP, a clause boundary, as illustrated in (1). (1) a. John believes [TP her to be pretty]. b. *John believes [cp that [Tp her was pretty]]. Apparently in contradiction to this standard view, however, a number of languages have been documented as possessing ECM (or `raising-to-object') and/or Passivization (or 'raising-to-subject') across a CP boundary (Massam 1985, Rivero 1987, J.-M.Yoon 1991, Ura 1994, among others). Korean is an example of such languages. As illustrated in (2), Korean allows optional ECM across a CP (K.-H. Lee 1988, J.-M. Yoon 1991, J.-S. Lee 1992, among many others). (2) John-i� [CP Mary-ka/lul� yepp-ess-tako]� mitnunta -Nom� -Nom/Acc be.pretty-Past-Comp believe `John believes that Mary was pretty.' In (2), the embedded subject can be optionally assigned accusative Case by the matrix ECM verb (or more correctly, by the matrix v under the Minimalist Case theory). An immediate question raised by this Korean long distance ECM (hereafter LD ECM) construction can be stated as in (3). (3) Issue 1: How can the embedded subject be accessible to the matrix verb (or the matrix v) without violating the locality of A-movement/agreement? Two additional facts raise further questions concerning the nature and the mechanism of LD ECM in Korean. First, as we will see in detail later, the availability of LD ECM in Korean is affected by the embedded verb. For instance, ECM is possible if the embedded verb is a stative verb as in (2), whereas ECM is impossible if the embedded verb is a transitive verb. This fact raises the second issue: 205 (4)� Issue 2: Why is the availability of ECM across CP determined by the embedded verb? The other fact concerns Passivization across a CP. As we will see in detail in section 4, Korean allows Passivization across a CP. At first glance, LD ECM and long distance Passivization (hereafter LD Passivization) seem to reflect the …

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