Why Korean Embedded Clauses Lack Speech-Level Endings: Default Valuation at Spell-Out

초록

This paper investigates why Korean’s rich system of addressee-oriented speech-style morphology, realized as a six-level paradigm of sentence-final endings in matrix clauses, is largely absent in embedded environments. Building on a detailed comparison between root and indirect-speech embedded clauses, we show that subordination does not merely “remove” politeness: embedded clauses systematically neutralize speech-level contrasts while preserving a reduced inventory of clause-type distinctions via uniform quotative endings (e.g., -ta/nya/(u)la/ca-ko), and they additionally regularize imperatives and exclamatives under embedding. We argue that existing accounts that ban embedded speech-style morphology by stipulating the absence of a performative layer or by hard locality restrictions are insufficient. Instead, we propose that embedded clauses can project the relevant addressee-related structure (AddresseeP/Hearer (Hr)), but that this structure is syntactically inactive in Korean embedded peripheries, yielding default feature valuation at Spell-Out and hence the observed morphological neutralization. We situate this proposal within a broader typology of indexical shift and allocutive agreement by comparing Korean with Magahi, where embedded allocutivity is possible and displays a “tell vs. think” contrast derived via Fin–Hr agreement in finite clauses. Korean, by contrast, patterns as agreement-deficient for Hr under embedding. We further show that jussive-type clauses (such as imperatives, propositives, and promissives) exhibit embedded “shift” via control-like dependencies in Mood rather than allocutive agreement, separating person restrictions from speech-style marking. Finally, we address apparent exceptions in which speech-level morphology surfaces before certain connective endings, arguing these reflect specific licensing by embedders and diachronic reanalysis rather than free embedded allocutivity. The result is a unified syntax–morphology account of embedded speech-style neutralization in Korean.

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