Not an empty operator but a null topic in Korean relatives and the nature of a RC-internal gap

Abstract

Departing from previous studies of Korean relatives, this paper provides a topicalization-based analysis for this construction (cf. Kuno (1973, 1976)). More specifically, unlike English counterparts, Korean relatives do not have gaps inside TPs of relative clauses (RCs), but at their peripheries. These gaps are identified not with empty operators, but with null topics, thereby entering into the same topic-comment interpretive relation with the ensuing TPs as the topic construction in Korean does. This proposal has several theoretical advantages. It offers a unified analysis for both apparently gapless adnominal clauses and apparently gapped relative clauses. It also accounts for the island immunity that Korean relatives display. Furthermore, the base-generation of null topics at the edges of RCs, and thereby the typical absence of the RC-internal gaps they interpretively associate with, predicts that it takes pragmatics and extra-linguistic knowledge to obtain the proper meaning relation between null topics and the following RC-internal TPs. In this approach, apparent postulation of gaps within RC-internal TPs needs to be explained by the LF reconstruction of null topics (or the corresponding RC head NPs).