Applying Collins and Postal (2012) to Korean

in (190).

(190) DP1 (Wang 2014: 179, adapted)

DP² D¹' φ-feature

percolation laoshi / furen D¹⁰

‘teacher/Madam’ wo / ni

‘I/you’

I agree with Wang’s idea since imposter candidates in Korean and Mandarin Chinese do not correspond to Collins and Postal’s definition of imposters.¹⁶⁴ Regardless of whether this study follows Collins and Postal (2012) or Wang (2014), the key point for explaining a Korean-type imposter (candidate) is that the non-third person pronoun determines a person feature of an entire imposter phrase. Thus, this study will not present any particular view as of now.

Kim (2015) investigates a non-third person R-expression in Korean under Collins and Postal’s (2012) imposter analysis. Also, she classifies Korean imposter constructions as already presented in (175). To explain those noun phrases, she posits a null pronoun on D which projects DP and determines a person feature of an entire DP. The D is associated with a higher C head, SpeechAct, as a notional pronoun in Collins and Postal (2012) is bound by the upper AUTHOR or ADDRESSEE. Kim’s analysis is depicted in (191). Since Korean imposters function as non-third person regarding binding, there is no movement in (191). This reminds us of Wang’s (2014) complex DP analysis on Mandarin pseudo-imposters. However, in Wang (2014), an overt R-expression occupies the specifier of DP, but in Kim (2015), it is located in the complement position.

(191)Kim’s (2015) structure of Korean imposters (Kim 2015: 156) SpeechActP

SpeechAct'

TP SpeechAct⁰

DP T'

D' … T⁰

D⁰ NP

null pronouns

‘I’, ‘you’, etc ‘mommy’

‘teacher’, etc

Kim’s (2015) approach can cover imposters in all the clausal types including jussives although she does not mention it explicitly, and the list of Korean imposters is well-organized. However, she has not paid attention to the fact that the null pronoun, which determines the person feature of an imposter as the head of a noun phrase, is not freely allowed. As a pro-drop language, a noun phrase is often unpronounced when it is easily inferable from discourse context. A covert pronoun in Kim (2015) is licensed by the

upper SpeechAct head, and this seems to be automatic since there are no restrictions. It is predicted then that imposters are possible without limitation if there are no semantic clashes. However, this is not true.

As mentioned in the previous subsections, discourse context holds information on an unpronounced pair of relational nouns for an imposter usage. A bare noun emma ‘mom’ cannot be an imposter when the referent is someone else’s mom. That is, ‘<I> (his) mommy’ cannot be the source of the imposter emma. Kim’s (2015) analysis seems to have difficulty in restricting this predictable but unacceptable interpretation. (191) cannot prevent the third person possessor his from occurring within the NP complement of D.

One might wonder if Korean imposters have to be bare to the exclusion of a notional part, the D⁰ in Kim (2015), which a pronoun or demonstrative occupies. However, this is incorrect because a complex noun phrase occurs in the R-expression part, namely the NP complement in Kim (2015). As shown in (192)a, a possessive pronoun can appear in an imposter construction. Here, the entire imposter always denotes the speaker since the possessor is the hearer. In addition, an imposter can be included in another noun phrase: the possessive R-expression emma ‘mom’ in (192)b can be understood as an imposter. This implies that the size of the complement NP in Kim (2015) is quite roomy.

(192)a. Ney enni-ka cikcep kwuwun ppang-i-ta.

your elder.sister-nom in.person bake.adn bread-cop-decl ‘(This) is bread that your sister made myself.’(your sister = speaker) b. [[Emma] ttal]-i nwukwu-ya?

mom daughter-nom who-sp ‘Who is mom’s daughter?’

(i) mom = speaker, mom’s daughter = hearer (ii) mom = hearer, mom’s daughter = speaker (iii) mom = speaker/hearer/[3] mom’s daughter = [3]¹⁶⁵

I do not claim that Kim’s (2015) structure in (191) is incorrect. What I would like to point out is that it cannot explain the problem that has just been raised, hence it needs elaboration. Nonetheless, the internal structure of imposters in Korean remains questionable. In particular, imposters are derived from an appositive structure in English according to Collins and Postal (2012). As Kim (2015) pointed out, appositive structures are unclear in Korean, and so the relation with imposters is not conclusive, either. As Wang (2014) argued in Mandarin Chinese, Korean imposters might be irrelevant to the appositive structure. Thus, the internal structure of imposters’ needs to be further investigated.

Meanwhile, Choi (2016a) argues that a jussive subject is an imposter, and a Jussive projection à la Zanuttini et al. (2012) is not required to license its subject. Choi’s (2016a) structure on imposters in Korean is represented in (193), which is the same with Collins and Postal’s (2012) structure in (185), except for the head-finality and the movement of a notional pronoun. To explain the non-third person binding in Korean imposters, Choi (2016a) hypothesizes that a notional pronoun (DP²) raises to the highest SpecDP, which projects its person feature to an entire DP (DP⁴). In contrast, DP¹ remains in situ, unlike English, in Collins and Postal (2012). Also, DP² checks a speaker or a hearer feature in connection with the upper SpeechAct domain.

165 The entire subject emma ttal is not an imposter in (192)(b-iii).

(193)Choi’s structure on Korean imposters: (Choi 2016a: 19, adapted) DP⁴ [1]

DP² D⁴'

I

DP³ D⁴

Clause <DP²>

<DP¹>

Kim Mina

Choi’s (2016a) analysis can explain why Korean imposters are non-third person both notionally and grammatically, contra English, but the argument overgeneralizes both imposters and a jussive subject. First, the formation of an imposter does not reflect the core interpretation: namely, the relation between a speaker and a hearer. It cannot rule out ‘<I> (his) mommy’ as imposter material, like Kim (2015). What is more crucial is that it overlooks the special property of jussive subjects, which I presented in Section 5.1.2. It is too radical to take an imposter and a jussive subject together.