Copy theory of movement and apparent ECM constructions

This paper reassesses a recent conceptualization of movement, the copy theory of movement (CTM, henceforth) and examines if CTM successfully accounts for so-called ECM constructions in Japanese and Korean (J/K). Despite various conceptual and empirical advantages it does have, CTM leads to non-trivial problems in the application to the analysis of so-called J/K ECM constructions. In this paper, we go over Abe's (2013) implementation of Japanese ECM constructions based on CTM. Despite an interesting formulation of P-L Match condition coupled with CTM, his proposal poses a number of empirical as well as conceptual problems when applied to Japanese and Korean. As an alternative, we propose FocP for apparent ECM constructions in Korean. In particular, the Ace-marked NP (or DP) is proposed to occupy the Spec of Focus Phrase, which is posited on top of CP layer. We then show how the proposed analysis accounts for a variety of empirical phenomena attested in apparent Korean ECM constructions. (Konkuk University)