Some Notes on Korean Resultative Small Clauses: Focused on Ko’s (2015b) Typology

Abstract

Ko (2015b) classifies Korean resultative small clause (RSCs) into four sub-types, due to combinations of two factors, i.e., the RSC's functional status (complement vs. adjunct) and the RSC subject's phonological status (overt vs. covert). She accounts for typological differences, especially movement-related behaviors, RSCs display, in terms of the theory of cyclic spell-out (Fox and Pesetsky 2005, Ko 2005). It will be shown in this paper, however, that her system faces non-trivial problems. First, the RSC subject's phonological status in fact does not contribute to the RSC typology, as subjects in any type can be suppressed in principle, given an appropriate context. Second, -key RSCs may function as a complement (not unambiguously as an adjunct). Third, no proper theory is provided for the ellipsis restrictions that the RSC displays. The present work proposes a control based RSC typology and tries to provide a unified explanation of restrictions on ellipsis as well as movement in RSCs, basically following Chung’s (2007, 2009, 2011) constituency based account of the syntactic restrictions.