On Different Types of Negative Concord Items and Their Interpretation in Korean

Abstract

his paper aims to investigate an idea, proposed by Park (2013) and Tieu & Kang (2014), that Korean has different types of NCIs in terms of feature specification, exemplified into amwu-(N)-to and etten-(N)-to. Based on the fact that amwu-(N)-to, but not etten-(N)-to, appears as a fragment form, the previous studies argue that NCI licensing is an instance of Agree where an interpretable [NEG] feature of an NCI checks off an uninterpretable [NEG] feature of negation. This paper, however, argues that the ability to appear as a fragment answer cannot be a crucial diagnostics to differentiate one from the other, because the wh-based etten-(N)-to also appears as an elided form when associated with the existence of a presupposition. This paper also casts a doubt on whether the Identity Condition in ellipsis is always guaranteed, since a fragment NCI can be interpreted as positive, which is not be restored under the Identity Condition. Finally, this paper brings up a question of whether an uninterpretable [NEG] feature of negation is conceptually plausible, which would stipulate the existence of other kinds of negation.