The Structure of Relative Clauses in Korean

Abstract

This paper is a part of my research project which delves into the structural characteristics of NPs in languages without an article system such as Korean. It reexamines the structure of relative NP constructions in Korean, focusing on analyzing a relative clause in Korean. Though the majority of previous works on relatives analyzes it as a CP, this paper proposes an alternative analysis, an IP hypothesis, and it shows that this structural difference is a more fundamental one than the lack of relative pronouns in Korean relatives. First, I will argue against an analysis that the structure of a relative NP is not completely parallel to that of a complex NP which includes either an IP or a CP. I will argue for the IP hypothesis through the similarity between relativization and scrambling; they both involve an IP adjunction and they are subject to the argument restriction. These characteristics will be compared to Topicalization, an adjunction to CP which does not observe such restriction. I will show the advantages of the IP analysis in treating the exclusiveness of a Topic in a relative clause and accounting for the existence of a language-specific relative, an internally-headed relative constructions.

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