A Head-Driven and Constraint-Based Analysis of Korean Relative Clause Constructions

Abstract

Relative clause constructions have been notorious for their complexity in terms of syntax and semantics. This paper develops a treatment of the syntactic and semantic properties of Korean relative clause constructions, differing in several key respects from those of English. This treatment, developed within the tradition of a constraint-based framework, Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar theory, adapts Sag's (1997) approach to grammatical constructions in English relatives. As in Sag's analysis, our analysis is 'head-driven' and 'constraint-based' in the sense that the head of a lexical (relative-clause) head and declarative constraints on well-defined constructions play a crucial role in the formation of relative clauses. This system enables us to eliminate the invisible element (e.g., trace or empty operator) from the analysis of Korean relative clauses and further to express cross- cutting generalizations among grammatical constructions thru the mechanism of hierarchical inheritance of type constraints. One of the main consequences of this analysis is to provide a straightforward account for local as well as non-local relative clause constructions which have been known as violating the firm syntactic island constraints such as the Complex Noun Phrase Constraints (CNPC) but for which no plausible and comprehensive analysis has been provided yet.