Control Constructions Redux: Focusing on the -tolok Clause

Recent studies (Polinsky 2007, inter alia) on control constructions show that Korean seems to exhibit three types of control constructions. In one type, the controller precedes the controllee. In another type, the controllee precedes the controller. The third is the so-called backward object control construction (Monahan 2003, 2005) where the overt controller occurs in the embedded clause, and the matrix clause has a silent element. These three are called ACC1, ACC2 and NOM respectively in terms of Polinsky (2007), Kwon, Monahan & Polinsky (2010). This paper revisits Polinsky's three constructions and then puts forward a different analysis of ACC2, given that it is structurally ambiguous depending on whether the -tolok clause is a complement or an adjunct.