Diagnosing Sluicing Constructions in Korean: Sluicing, Cleft, or What?

Abstract

I claim sluicing constructions in Korean do not involve sluicing contra Takahashi (1993, 1994). I will show that they are not cleft constructions, either (Nishiyama, Whitman and Yi 1996, and Park 2001, among others), using the diagnoses by Merchant (2001). I will show that the two major arguments of cleft approach for Korean sluicing constructions, namely, parallels in case and optional copula cannot be arguments for the cleft approach, which just follow from the present proposal of the non-elliptical wh-question for Korean sluicing constructions. Besides, I also show that the present proposal nicely deals with postposition stranding in Korean sluicing constructions for which cleft approach simply fails. The present proposal has a nontrivial implication on the typology of sluicing constructions across languages: non-elliptical wh-question in addition to sluicing and cleft.