The syntax of RC extraposition in Korean: Economy and repair

Abstract

This paper investigates the syntax of relative clauses (RCs) in sentence-final position in Korean, which have been analyzed as RC right dislocation (RD)/afterthought by Park and Kim (2009) and Kim and Park (2010), Ko (2014, 2015), and Chung (2016). In this paper we argue that the construction in question is not RC RD but RC Extraposition, which behaves in the similar fashion as English or German RC/AP Extraposition. We propose, following the lead of Koster (2000), that 'extraposed' RCs in Korean are derived by moving out of the second conjunct minimally constructed and then elided after the comma as a specifying coordinator. To capture the local/proximate association between the 'extraposed' RC and its host, we suggest that structure building for both the first and the second conjuncts containing them is regulated by the economy principle on specifying coordination: the two conjuncts are constructed in a bottom-up mode as minimally as possible only up to the need of specifying coordination. However, there are cases where the economy principle on structure building in RC Extraposition is violated, and thus the apparently non-local dependency between the 'extraposed' RC and its host holds. We submit that these cases point to the fact that grammar entertains a strategy of repairing the grammatically-illicit derivation/representation.