On the Real Nature of Scrambling in Korean
IM Hong-Pin · Macrolinguistics · 2008
The putative scrambling in Korean has intrinsic difficulties due to the lack of driving force for the movement of constituents. The Case theory, EPP and Focus Feature, etc. does not support the movement of the scrambled constituent. The radical LF-reconstruction or the LF-lowering also raises serious questions about the semantics of the moved constituent. This paper claims that the putative scrambled constituent should be analyzed as a Word Order Topic, based on the Lexicalist Case Hypothesis which says that the case should be defined on the basis of lexical information, and the Hypothesis of Variable Medial Projection which says that the number of medial projections should be matched with the number of arguments of a predicate. As to the so-called Long Distance Scrambling (LDS), the typical cases considered hitherto to be LDS is not a real LDS, because the object in front of the matrix subject is not a constituent of the embedded clause, but that of the.matrix clause. As to the embedded constituent in front of the matrix subject, this paper introduces the principles of Constituent Affiliation Principle which says that a constituent should be in its own clause, or should be construed to be as if it were in its own clause, and Transparent Verb Principle (TVP) which says that a thinking- or saying-verb functions as if it were nonexistent in certain discoursesyntactic contexts. The typical object of the so-called LDS that appears in the thinking- or saying-verb construction is on a par with that of the Short Distance Scrambling (SDS) in virtual structure. In virtual structure, the matrix clause can be seen nonexistent by the TVP and the matrix subject can be seen to function as a parenthetical phrase.