Relativization in Korean: Formal Restrictions and Functional Solutions

This study is about how Korean deals with restrictions in relative clause (RC) formation by using constructions that are functionally similar to an RC. Korean is regarded as a language that uses the pronoun-retention strategy for a genitive RC, an RC formed on a genitive NP. However, it is doubtful that this RC forming strategy is used in everyday situations, since in most cases an RC with a resumptive pronoun (RP) sounds unnatural in Korean. In this thesis, therefore, following the description of formal constraints on relativization and RC formation in Korean, a genitive RC with an RP (GRP) is investigated in contemporary Korean corpora to see to what extent it is used. Simultaneously, a Korean-English parallel corpus and examples from the Bible are examined to observe how English genitive RCs are expressed in their Korean counterparts. The findings show that GRPs tend to be avoided, and the genitive RC tends to be paraphrased into a non-genitive RC or a non-RC. Notably, when the English genitive RC is expressed as a non-RC, linked clauses appear most frequently. Having found that linked clauses are used to sort out the restrictions in RC formation, the interaction between RCs and linked clauses is investigated. Two constructions are examined toward this aim: a linked clause marked by -nuntey (-nuntey clause) and an RC formed by the non-reduction strategy (non-reduction RC). The results show that these two constructions can be regarded as polysemous constructions functioning as an RC as well as an adverbial clause. The study also illustrates how the -nuntey clause and the non-reduction RC functionally compensate for the prenominal gap RCs in Korean. This study offers a new perspective on how restrictions in RC formation can be dealt with in Korean: a non-RC form can be adopted to abandon an RC form, which corresponds to what Croft (2003) refers to as communicative motivation, the need to provide some grammatical means to express virtually any concept or complex structure of concepts