Scrambling in Korean and the Labeling Theory

Abstract

This paper investigates the long-standing issue of how scrambling as a word order- changing operation is to be understood in light of the general theory of structure building, particularly vis-à-vis Chomsky’s (2013, 2005) Labeling Theory. First, noting that case or inflectional markers are realized on clausal dependent elements in-situ in Korean, we argue that they come about to record the output of labeling in the wake of the Merge operation during structure building. In other words, they are reflections of labeling in head-complement or XP-YP relations in tandem with theta-marking, predication, and predicate modification. Second, noting that scrambling is an adjunction operation via non-A, non-operator movement, we argue that a scrambled element enters into licensing relation just like an adjunct. Neither the former nor the latter can be accommodated into the properly labeled structure in the syntactic component. They rather resort to processes such as semantic predication or predicate modification at the interface to resolve the problem with labeling.