Experimental Revisiting of the Double Relative Clauses in Korean

초록

This study revisits the claim that the well-formed Double Relative Clauses(DRCs) in Korean are derived from well-formed double nominative constructions(DNCs) by employing empirical research. Through a series of acceptabilityjudgment tasks, we first confirm that typically unmarked forms are generallymore acceptable than marked ones. Similar to the general pattern of markednesssentences, basic forms of DRCs without well-formed DNC counterparts weremore acceptable than DRCs and DRCs were not, at least, deemed unacceptable. DRCs with DNC counterparts, however, exhibited higher acceptability than theDNCs. In addition, topic constructions, another potential source of DRCs, showedhigher acceptability than DNCs. In Experiment 2, a closer examination of theacceptability of various DNC types revealed that they were consistently lessacceptable than alternative forms, such as topic constructions and relativeclauses. Our study challenges the traditional view of DNCs as foundationalstructures for DRCs and call for further investigation into the derivational originsof DRCs to better understand their underlying structure.

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