Possessor Ascension and Multiple Nominative Constructions in Korean

A number of proposals have been made for the syntactic characterization of multiple nominative constructions in Korean, where the first nominal stands in a possessor relation to the second one. This paper analyzes the structures of the two types of these multiple nominative constructions, i.e. Possessor Ascension MNCs and Focus MNCs, within the framework of standard Relational Grammar, and argues that, despite their superficial similarities, these two constructions have different syntactic structures. That is, the first nominal in Possessor Ascension MNCs is an ascended final subject, while the first nominal in Focus MNCs is a focused nominal. In order to justify this analysis, this paper shows that each nominative-marked nominal in both types of MNCs behaves differently with respect to several syntactic phenomena which make crucial reference to subjecthood.