“것” 분열 구문에서의 “것”의 유정성

Hong, Yong-Tcheol. 2017. Animacy of kes in kes Cleft Construction. Studies in Generative Grammar, 27-3, 713-731. In Korean, kes, a [-animate] noun like thing, is known to be insensitive to animacy in kes cleft construction. On the other hand, kes cleft construction is a specificational copular clause; the suject kes clause introduces a variable, and the complement serves to provide a value for that variable. This squib claims (i) that kes in kes cleft construction functions as a variable requiring its value, (ii) that as a variable, its animacy feature is unspecified, and (iii) that its unspecified feature [animate] is compatible with predicates selecting [+animate]. So we can say that kes in kes cleft construction is actually sensitive to animacy contrary to its appearance. This apparent insensitivity takes place only in kes cleft construction because only this construction, which is a specificational clause, allows kes as a variable.