Pre- vs. Post-verbal Asymmetries and the Syntax of Korean RDC

Copyright 2012 by Daeho Chung 26th Pacific Asia Conference on Language,Information and Computation pages 219–228 Pre- vs. Post-verbal Asymmetries and the Syntax of Korean RDC Daeho Chung Hanyang University cdaeho@hanyang.ac.kr Abstract Among various important issues pertaining to the so-called right dislocated construction (RDC) in Korean are the basic word order and the grammatical relation the right dislocated (RDed) element assumes to the rest of the structure. In his series of papers, J.-S. Lee (2007a,b, 2008a, 2009a,b, 2010, 2011, 2012) proposes a mono-clausal analysis of Korean RDC, according to which the RDed element is a direct dependent of the preceding predicate and Korean conforms to Kayne's (1994) universal SVO word order hypothesis due to the very existence of the RDC. In contrast, Chung (2008a, 2009b, 2010, 2011) advocates a non-mono-clausal approach, as in Tanaka (2001) and Kato (2007) for Japanese RDC, according to which the RDed element is taken as a fragment of a continuing sentence to which massive ellipsis has applied, while the head- finality is preserved. The current work tries to show that RDed elements cannot be viewed as direct dependents of the preceding predicate due to various asymmetries observed between pre- vs. post-verbal positions, favoring a non- mono-clausal analysis of Korean RDC. 1. Introduction Predicates in Korean are generally fixed at the clause final position, although the dependents are freely ordered, as in (1). It is observed in Nam and Ko (1986: 250-251) and Huh (1988: 263) among others, however, that Korean allows the so-called right dislocated construction (RDC), in which some apparent part of the sentence may show up at the post-predicate position, as in (2). (1) a. Cheli-ka Yuni-lul manna-ess-ta (SOV) Ch.-Nom Y.-Acc meet-Pst-DE 'Cheli saw Yuni.' b. Yuni-lul Cheli-ka manna-ess-ta (OSV) (2) a. Cheli-ka manna-ess-ta Yuni-lul (SVO) b. Yuni-lul manna-ess-ta Cheli-ka (OVS) c. manna-ess-ta Cheli-ka Yuni-lul (VSO) d. manna-ess-e Yuni-lul Cheli-ka (VOS) The RDC in Korean has recently received a great deal of attention as to the architecture of the structure. (See J.-S. Lee 2007a,b, 2008a, 2009a,b, 2010, 2011, 2012, Chung 2008a, 2009b, 2010, 2011, Lee and Yoon 2009, C.-H. Lee 2009, 2011, among others.) Among various issues around the RDC are the basic word order in Koran and the grammatical relation the RDed element in the post-verbal position assumes with the rest of the construction. Lee (2007a,b, 2008a, 2009a,b, 2010, 2011, 2012) proposes a mono-clausal structure based on Kayne's (1994) universal SVO hypothesis and treats the RDed element as a direct dependent of the preceding predicate. According to this analysis, (2a) is taken as the base word order and all other structures in (1) and (2) are derived from (2a), In contrast, Chung (2008a, 2009b. 2010, 2011), basically following Tanaka's (2001) analysis of Japanese RDC, advocates a non-mono-clausal analysis, according to which the RDC is derived as follows:1 1 See also Kuno (1978), Whitman (2000), and Kato (2007), among others, for non-mono-clausal approaches. Chung (2008a, 2009b, 2010) postulates a null conjunction that conjoins two root clauses: [Root ... ei ... ] & [Root XPi …

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