On extractability out of a null clausal complement in Korean

Abstract

Extractability out of a null clausal complement has recently been investigated intensively to assess whether a null argument, NP/DP or clause, has internal syntactic structure in such languages as Korean and Japanese. As a starting point, we critically review Takahashi’s (2020; 2023) and Park’s (2023) recent study of this issue in cleft constructions. We then add to them the two more constructions involving right location and relativization, showing that apparent extraction out of a null clausal complement all involve alleged chain heads at the (not left but) right periphery of the clauses that they are interpretively associated with. We move on to show using several diagnostics that the clauses at issue do not involve leftward movement, arguing against Takahashi’s (2020; 2023) and Park’s (2023) advocation of the extraction out of a null clausal complement inside these clauses. All in all, the extraction out of a null clausal complement is not allowed in Korean and Japanese, which has it as a consequence that the syntactic identity of a null argument needs to be investigated more rigorously.