Some Notes on Ko’s (2014b, 2015) Hybrid Approach to the Korean RDC

Abstract

Ko (2014b, 2015) argues for a hybrid approach to the right-dislocation construction (RDC) in Korean: An argument-type RDC results when the argument appendix undergoes S-focus movement to the SPEC of FocP and subsequently the remnant moves to the SPEC of TopP; in contrast, the adjunct-type RDC results from concatenating the adjunct appendix with the root clause. This review paper evaluates Ko‘s (2014b, 2015) hybrid approach, mainly addressing her treatment of the asymmetric behaviors that post-verbal WH-phrases vs. negative polarity items display and of the modification relation that the adjunct-type appendix has. It will be pointed out that there exist several non-trivial theoretical and empirical challenges to the hybrid approach, despite various interesting and insightful points it provides.