On the Island-(In)Sensitivity in the Right-Dislocation Construction in Korean

Abstract

This paper discusses a certain variability of island-(in)sensitivity in the Right-Dislocation Construction (RDC) in Korean. In the literature, it has been claimed that island- (in)sensitivity is not uniformly exhibited in the three types of the RDC: While the repetitive RDC is island-insensitive, the gapped RDC and the specificational RDC are island-sensitive. Given the variability of the island-(in)sensitivity across the three types, some researchers propose different approaches to different types of the RDC. In this paper, however, we claim that the variability is not on firm ground by showing that in certain environments, the gapped RDC and the Specificational RDC also exhibit the island-insensitivity as the repetitive RDC. We suggest that the uniform ellipsis approach is more promising.