A reconsideration of the (non-)uniform syntax of Korean right-dislocation

Furuya, Kaori. 2018. A reconsideration of the (non-)uniform syntax of Korean rightdislocation. Linguistic Research 35(2), 275-304. This paper investigates the clausal nature of Korean Right-Dislocation Constructions (RDCs) and reconsiders recent extant (non-)uniform analyses of RDCs. Since Korean is a pro-drop language, most of the literature on Korean RDCs assumes the preverbal empty category as pro or a trace out of movement in the constructions. However, recent literature has shown that null arguments can also be derived via argument ellipsis (e.g. Sakamoto 2016). The paper identifies the categorial statuses of preverbal empty categories and demonstrates similarities and differences between gapped and gapless RDCs that Ko (2016) and Ahn and Cho (2016, 2017) do not observe. It argues that a non-uniform analysis is most compatible to account for the distribution of empty categories of RDCs. The proposed analysis receives support form novel evidence based on (non-)parallelisms between RDCs and fragment answers. (University of North Texas)