Table Of ContentEVENT-STRUCTURE AND THE INTERNALLY-HEADED RELATIVE CLAUSE
CONSTRUCTION IN KOREAN AND JAPANESE
A Dissertation Presented
by
MIN-JOO KIM
Submitted to the Graduate School of the
University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
September 2004
Linguistics
© Copyright by Min-Joo Kim 2004
All Rights Reserved
EVENT-STRUCTURE AND THE INTERNALLY-HEADED RELATIVE CLAUSE
CONSTRUCTION IN KOREAN AND JAPANESE
A Dissertation Presented
by
MIN-JOO KIM
Approved as to style and content by:
____________________________________
Kyle B. Johnson, Chair
____________________________________
Angelika Kratzer, Member
____________________________________
Christopher Potts, Member
____________________________________
Margaret Speas, Member
____________________________________
Ellen Woolford, Member
____________________________________
Chisato Kitagawa, Outside Member
__________________________________
Elisabeth Selkirk, Head
Department of Linguistics
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
John Donne, a famous English metaphysical poet, once wrote, “No man is an
Island.” Although I think the context in which he wrote this sentence had little to do with
dissertation-writing, I feel that the sentence, in fact, quite accurately captures my present
feelings. Writing this dissertation has been a long and lonely process, but I never felt
totally isolated because I was always connected to other islands. Indeed, without the
access to the brilliant minds around me, the love and support from my family and friends,
I wouldn’t have been able to get through the process.
Kyle Johnson has been a wonderful chair. He was so generous with his time (not
to mention his delightful humor). He met with me almost every week in the spring of
2003, when I was trying to make sense of these “strange” relative clauses in connection
with small clauses. With his vast knowledge of the literature and keen insight into
linguistic phenomena, Kyle always pointed to the right directions for me. In fact, he has
been guiding me throughout the course of my studies at UMass, serving on both of my
generals paper committees.
I feel extremely fortunate to have Angelika Kratzer as a committee member and
as a mentor. Angelika has set a truly ideal role model for me, not only as a scholar but
also as a human being. She never failed to offer profound and thought-provoking
comments on my work. Meeting with her has always been a pleasure, which I will long
cherish, along with all the great things she has taught me about linguistics and life.
I feel equally privileged to have Chris Potts on my committee. Chris’s joining the
linguistics faculty at UMass in my last year is one of the greatest things that happened in
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my life. I cannot begin to express how much I’ve learned from him through our numerous
meetings, e-mail correspondences, and conversations. I am truly grateful for his most
thorough and helpful comments on my dissertation (and several other works of mine),
and his prompt responses to my requests. In addition, I greatly admire and appreciate his
openness to new ideas, and his willingness to serve the community and the world in every
way he can.
I also benefited immensely from interactions with Ellen Woolford. Ellen taught
me so much about linguistics with her profound knowledge of various languages and
remarkable ability to see the big picture. She also contributed a great deal to the
argumentation and the organization of the dissertation. And she was always there for me
whenever I needed someone to talk to, be it about my dissertation or something else.
I want to thank Peggy Speas for her guidance and support all throughout my
“growing up” process as a linguist. Peggy not only served on my dissertation committee
but also on my first generals paper committee. She was largely responsible for me to
discover the incomparable joy of working and living as a linguist. I deeply appreciate her
willingness to listen to my often half-baked ideas, and her unique approach to languages,
which always made me go back and rethink my analyses.
Chisato Kitagawa played an excellent role as an outside member. Being an expert
on the subject matter himself, he offered insightful suggestions for my dissertation. He
also directed me to several crucial references. Indeed, without his help, I would have left
out so much more relevant work than I already might have.
In addition to my committee members, numerous people contributed to the
formation of this dissertation. First and foremost, I would like to thank Makoto Kadowaki.
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As a good linguist and a native speaker of Japanese, Makoto helped me to clarify some of
the key issues surrounding internally headed relatives in Japanese. He also provided me
with some of the crucial literature, and helped me with conference presentations by being
the first audience for me.
Next, I am indebted to Rudy Troike, who offered me extremely detailed and
thoughtful comments on the first draft of my dissertation, addressing many challenging
and important questions. I am also grateful to Uli Sauerland, who was visiting the UMass
Linguistics Department between the fall of 2002 and the spring of 2003. During his visit,
Uli helped me develop some of the central ideas in my dissertation.
I also wish to express my gratitude to the scholars whose works taught me so
much about internally headed relatives, E-type pronouns, and events: Yuki Kuroda,
Chisato Kitagawa, Koji Hoshi, Junko Shimoyama, Yong-Beom Kim, Chan Chung and
Jong-Bok Kim, Daeho Chung, Gareth Evans, Irene Heim, Nirit Kadmon, Gennaro
Chierchia, Paul Elbourne, Donald Davidson, Terry Parsons, Angelika Kratzer, Fred
Landman, and Susan Rothstein, to name just a few.
In addition, I want to thank Mako Hirotani, Makoto Kadowaki, Shigeto Kawahara,
Koichiro Nakamura, and Taka Shinya for the judgments on some the crucial Japanese
data presented in my dissertation, and Young-joo Lee, Ju-Eun Lee, Ji-yung Kim, Heejeng
Ko, Gihoon Song, and Hosuk Yoon for participating in the survey I conducted on Korean
internally headed relatives in the spring of 2003.
Now I’d like to take this opportunity to thank those who indirectly contributed to
my dissertation. First, I want to thank my teachers at UMass and at Smith: Barbara Partee,
Tom Roeper, Lisa Matthewson, John McCarthy, Joe Pater, Emmon Bach, Lyn Frazier,
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Lisa Selkirk, and Jill de Villiers. I am especially grateful to Barbara and Tom for giving
me the opportunity to work on their NSF and NIH grant projects.
Second, I want to thank my teachers at the University of Arizona: Rudy Troike,
Andy Barss, Andrew Carnie, Dick Demers, and Yoshi Ono. I’m particularly indebted to
Rudy for advising me to become a linguist and providing me with the most incredible
support ever since I took his introduction to English Grammar class in the spring of 1998.
Third, I’d like to thank my teachers at Chonnam University, especially Professors
Sekeun Kim, Yeonhee Choi, Heungsoo Lee, Young-kil Lee, the late Jeonghwan Lee,
Byung-kyu Ahn, and Taewoon Min, and the Korean linguistics professors I met after I
came to the US such as Chungmin Lee, Sang-Cheol Ahn, James Hye-suk Yoon, Soowon
Kim, Jinhyung Kim, Sinsook Lee, and Insim Park, for their warm encouragements (and
material support which involved good food).
My life at UMass has been filled with wonderful things, thanks to my friends and
colleagues. My most heart-felt thanks go to Makoto Kadowaki, Andries Coetzee, Angela
Carpenter, who have been an integral part of my life. I thank Hosuk Yoon, Mike Terry,
Uri Strauss, Ji-yung Kim, Mariko Sugahara, Paul de Lacy, and Ana Arregui for their
friendship. I also thank the Linguistics Department secretaries Lynne Ballard and Kathy
Adamczyk for their help with administrative matters, and for their pleasant presence.
Completing this dissertation also involved several non-linguists. My friends
Jeong-hee Kim, Heejung Park, Lize Coetzee, and Chunkoong Han were always there for
me, either in person or in spirit. My family and relatives, especially my mom and my aunt
Heesan, gave me the warmest possible support. I dedicate this dissertation to my parents
and to the memory of Chunkoong, with love and gratitude that defies language.
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ABSTRACT
EVENT-STRUCTURE AND THE INTERNALLY-HEADED RELATIVE CLAUSE
CONSTRUCTION IN KOREAN AND JAPANESE
SEPTEMBER 2004
MIN-JOO KIM, B.A., CHONNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY
M.A., UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
M.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST
Ph. D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST
Directed by: Professor Kyle B. Johnson
This dissertation investigates how syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic factors
interact to produce the Internally-Headed Relative Clause (IHRC) construction in Korean
and Japanese.
The IHRC construction differs from the more familiar Externally-Headed
Relative Clause (EHRC) construction in several ways. First, unlike an EHRC, an IHRC’s
content restricts the matrix clause’s content, rather than the semantic head’s. Second, its
interpretation is heavily influenced by the discourse context in ways not seen with the
EHRC. Third, unlike the head of an EHRC, the head of an IHRC does not correspond to
any overt syntactic phrase, so it needs to be determined by language users, based on the
relative clause’s content, the matrix predicate’s semantics, and the discourse context.
The literature offers numerous insightful analyses of the IHRC construction, but it
leaves two central questions unanswered: what determines the interpretation of the
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construction? And, if pragmatic principles have a role to play, how do they interact with
the morphosyntax and the semantics?
I answer these questions within an event semantics framework. I show that the
construction’s interpretation is determined partly by grammatical factors (e.g., the
embedded clause’s aspect, the matrix predicate’s semantics) and partly by pragmatic
factors (e.g., the discourse context and discourse participants’ world knowledge). In
particular, I isolate two sources of the semantic variability of the construction.
First, the matrix clause contains a pronominal definite description, whose
denotation contains a free relation variable. This variable’s value is determined by the
embedded clause’s event structure, the matrix predicate’s semantics, and the discourse
context. Second, the relative operator that occurs in this construction connects the
embedded clause’s content with the matrix clause’s content by establishing either a
temporal or a causal relation between them, depending on whether the embedded clause
describes a temporary state or a permanent state.
This study establishes important connections between the semantics of a definite
description and event structure, thereby solving the particularly challenging formal-
linking problem, one that afflicts existing E-type pronoun analyses. It also provides a
constrained but flexible interpretive mechanism for the construction, eliminating the need
for many of the extra-grammatical constraints that characterize existing treatments.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv
ABSTRACT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii
LIST OF TABLES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiv
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv
CHAPTER
1. INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2. Basic properties of the IHRC construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2.1. Properties of the internal head . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2.1.1. Duality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2.1.2. Indeterminacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.2.2. Properties of the IHRC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.2.2.1. Interaction with the matrix clause’s content . . . . . . . . 10
1.2.2.2. Semantic variability relative to the matrix
clause’s content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
1.2.3. Summary of the basic properties of the IHRC construction . . . . 20
1.3. The gist of the proposal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
1.3.1. On the semantics of the IHRC construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
1.3.2. On the syntax of the IHRC construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
1.4. Basic theoretical assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
1.4.1. The semantic assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
1.4.1.1. Basic assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
1.4.1.2. A brief introduction to the (neo)-Davidsonian
event theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
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