Obligatory Control and Coordinated Deletion as Korean Subject Diagnostics: An Experimental Approach

Abstract

This study investigated the distribution of subject properties in Korean. Based on the previous studies on so-called ‘subjecthood diagnostics’ in Korean Multiple Subject Constructions (MSCs), the current study investigates how different subject properties are distributed in single subject constructions (Non-MSCs) and MSCs. Focusing on two distinct subject properties – obligatory control (OC) of PRO and coordinated deletion (CD) – an empirical syntactic experiment was designed to test how these two subjecthood diagnostics behave in the Non-MSC and MSC environments. Seventy Korean native speakers were tested over magnitude estimation task, composed of 80 Korean sentences representing different subject properties in single or multiple subject constructions. Overall results showed (i) both OC and CD can be used as subjecthood diagnostic tests in the Non-MSC environments, but (ii) that only OC can be used as a subjecthood diagnostic test in the MSC environments.