Some Asymmetries in Perception Verb Construction in Korean

In this paper, I argue that some extraction asymmetries between the preverbal and the postverbal embedded clause in the perception verb construction in Korean lead to the argument that the postverbal embedded clause is a real complement in this language. This thus constitutes one piece of evidence for the claim that the phrase markers of Korean underlyingly involve a head-initial structure, but not the traditional head-final structure. I also deal with asymmetries between perception verb construction and epistemic verb construction. From the theoretical perspective, a species of A-over-A condition and a Case-related freezing condition on (sub)extraction are shown to impose an underlyingly head-initial structure on Korean. The results obtained lend a support to Kayne's (1994) Universal Order Hypothesis. Consequently, it helps eliminate the head-parameter from Universal Grammar in conformity with the recent spirit of minimalism (Chomsky 2005).