Labeling, Cartography, and the Left-periphery of Korean Clauses

Abstract

The main goal of this paper is to provide a cartographic approach to two salient interpretations, an ''exhaustive listing focus'' (ELF) and a ''neutral description of event'' (NDE) reading, from the initial Nominative Case-marked subject NP in matrix Multiple Nominative Case (MNC) constructions, as well as the Accusative Case-marked subject NP in Exceptional Case Marking (ECM) constructions. Regarding this so-called “first-position effect,” we first argue, assuming Rizzi''s (1997) cartographic view of clausal structure, that Korean does not have the [Spec,TP] position, and that the ELF reading is obtained when the clause-initial subject NP in both constructions ends up in the [Spec,FocP] position while the NDE reading is possible when the first subject NP stays low in the clause, namely in the [Spec,FinP] position. Second, following Chomsky''s (2014, 2015) Labeling Algorithm, we argue that given the absence of phi-features in Korean, subject NPs are licensed by predication in Heycock’s (1994, 2008) sense, and that labeling of a discourse-related projection like FocP becomes possible because of ‘prominent feature sharing’ after the subject NP raises to the specifier position of the functional projection. To support this claim, we present crosslinguistic evidence from English.