Unified Clausal Approach to Wh-Constructions in Korean Revisited: An Analysis Based on Reanalysis

Abstract

Wh-phrases in Korean can have various quantificational meanings depending on the kinds of quantificational elements they are associated with. Quantificational elements, which are usually called “Q(-particles),” appear in diverse syntactic positions. Despite this, there have been claims that all Q-particles in Korean can be analyzed as C's and that wh-QPs like nwukwunka 'somebody' have clausal structures (Suh 1989, etc.) The goal of this paper is twofold. First, I show how this approach, which I will call the Unified Clausal Approach, following Chung (1996), could provide a principled explanation for some gaps in the distribution of wh-phrases and Q-particles in Korean. Second, I provide explanations for the very basic question of the Unified Clausal Approach, i.e., if all wh-QPs have clausal structures, why and how some wh-QPs are perceived by most native speakers as nominal, not clausal, arguments of a predicate and show various syntactic properties as such. My claim is that some wh-QPs lost their complex clausal structures and underwent reanalysis as nominal categories. As arguments for this claim, I show that some properties of wh-QPs cannot be explained adequately unless we assume that they were reanalyzed as nominal categories. I also show that the various properties of wh-QPs fit the prototypical pattern of reanalysis/grammaticalization.