Morphosyntactic form of Korean fragments is relevant to their resolution

Authors

  • Joanna Nykiel Kyung Hee University
  • Jong-Bok Kim Kyung Hee University
  • Rok Sim Kyung Hee University
  • Okgi Kim University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3765/plsa.v3i1.4315

Keywords:

ellipsis, morphosyntactic match, fragments, sluicing, Korean, direct-access mechanism

Abstract

We offer evidence for a structural identity constraint between a fragment and the structurally parallel position in the antecedent (which we term correspondent here). We ask if there is a preference for morphosyntactic match (generally in terms of syntactic category, but in terms of case marking in the Korean data discussed here) between a fragment and its correspondent. This question follows from the idea that in order to interpret fragments, the parser directly accesses content-addressable representations stored in memory, using as retrieval cues the linguistic information that fragments provide. We explore this preference using experimental data from Korean. In three acceptability judgment experiments, we demonstrate that (1) morphosyntactic match between fragments and correspondents is favored over mismatch, (2) the acceptability of mismatch is directional, favoring fragments that are morphosyntactically less complex than correspondents over the reverse, and (3) caseless fragments are degraded when paired with implicit correspondents compared to explicit ones.

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Published

2018-03-03

How to Cite

Nykiel, Joanna, Jong-Bok Kim, Rok Sim, and Okgi Kim. 2018. “Morphosyntactic Form of Korean Fragments Is Relevant to Their Resolution”. Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America 3 (1): 27:1–14. https://doi.org/10.3765/plsa.v3i1.4315.