Null Argument Redux

초록

A null argument in Korean type languages has been a topic of much debate since Kuroda (1965), witnessing various proposals including a phonetically unrealized empty pronoun (Kuroda 1965, Huang 1984, Hoji 1985), a free empty category (Xu 1986) or ellipsis either of VP (Otani and Whitman 1991) or DP (Oku 1998, Kim 1999). I suggest that a null argument in Korean is a DP with pro and a null NP within it. I will show that from the proposed structure, its interpretations and distributions in various constructions follow. The present proposal, if on the right track, has a nontrivial implication for null arguments in languages typologically akin to Korean.

키워드