A Note on IHRCs: Restrictives vs. Non-Restrictives

Abstract

It is well-known that Korean/Japanese IHRCs have definite force (Hoshi 1995; Shimoyama 1999, 2001; M. Kim 2004, 2007; Lee 2006). As such, Grosu and Hoshi (2019) argue that they should be treated as predicate-denoting relatives since all the other definite relatives denote predicates. Accepting this argument, Korean and Japanese IHRCs are restrictives rather than appositives since it is a general assumption that restrictives denote predicates, while appositives denote propositions. This paper claims that Korean(Japanese) IHRCs are non-restrictives in line with Kitagawa (2005, 2019) and Lee (2006), based on the similarities between Korean(Japanese) IHRCs and the best-known cases of appositives, i.e. the English cases. Presenting the dissimilarities at the same time, this paper argues that Korean(Japanese) IHRCs are not simply non-restrictives but rather ‘integrated’ non-restrictives in Cinque’s (2020) sense, while the best-known cases of appositives are ‘non-integrated’ non-restrictives. Deriving the similarities and the dissimilarities from the structural grounds, this paper comes to imply that kes in Korean can be used as a kind of saving device, i.e., a resumptive pronoun in Cinque’s (2020) sense, which is employed when deletion does not work due to lack of identity.