Sluicing and stripping in Korean : a non-ellipsis, anaphoric analysis

This dissertation examines some constructions that have been traditionally described as ellipsis phenomena in Korean. Specifically, I focus on the embedded sluicing construction and its two variants (i.e., the embedded sluicing-like construction and the embedded confirmative/contrastive construction), and the stripping construction. In doing so, I first show that there are two possible types for each of the constructions in terms of the presence of a copula. I then argue that regardless of whether or not they contain a copula they are not truly 'ellipsis', since they cannot be related to a full form by adding words. Instead they should be treated as simple full clauses. In particular, I claim that they are like other subject-predicate constructions, where the subject is a (possibly phonologically silent) anaphoric pronoun and a [VERBAL +] predicate. I show that previous analyses of these constructions face problems in accounting for their diverse intriguing properties, since they do not distinguish between these two types or they resort to PF deletion and silent syntax. I then argue that when the clause occurs with a copula, the copula has a specificational use, whereas when it does not occur with a copula, the [VERBAL +] predicate simply denotes the property of the pronominal subject. I also offer formal representations of some representative examples of the these constructions, adopting the framework of HPSG (Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar). This analysis enables us to capture their numerous common grammatical properties and to explain their different behavior in some respects, making the most of discourse/context information.