Gapping in V+ko Construction in Korean as Dependent Ellipsis

Abstract

It has been argued that Korean has two types of V+ko coordinate constructions: tensed V+ko construction and the un-tensed V+ko construction. I claim only the former constitutes a genuine instance of coordination structure, diverging from the common view (Yoon 1993, 1994, 1997, Chung 2001, 2005, Kim and Cho 2012, Jung 2016, among others). I will show that gapping in Korean conforms to the cross-linguistic generalization that it elides the tensed verb in a conjunct coordinated with another clause containing the same verb. I propose dependent ellipsis for the analysis of gapping in Korean, an idea as originally proposed by Williams (1997), Ackema and Szendröi, (2002) and Hernández (2007), among others, for English gapping. The striking common aspects of gapping in English and Korean reflect a common mechanism of dependent ellipsis beyond the superficial difference in the directionality of gapping as attributed to the word order parameter of the universal grammar.