An Ellipsis Approach to Gapless Relative Clauses in Korean

In this paper I argue that the so-called gapless relative clause (GRC) in Korean actually has a syntactic gap, and thus, it is a variant of the externally headed regular gappy RC. I also argue that the surface structure of GRC is derived from the underlying structure where the cause-effect relation required in GRC constructions is fully realized via pragmatically conditioned ellipsis. Thus I suggest that the verbal effect part can be ellipted to the extent that this part is pragmatically recoverable in the presence of the head noun that denotes the same effect. The categorial status of the GRC is further claimed to be CP, which then hosts operator movement in its Spec in a usual way. So there is little anomaly in the RCs known as gapless RCs.