A Multiple Dominance Analysis of Right Node Sharing Constructions

Abstract

Some East Asian languages like Korean and Japanese allow a special type of coordination, in which no verbal element appears except in the last conjunct. Various approaches have been put forth as to the syntax of such verbless coordination (hereafter VLC): a right node raising analysis by Saito (1987), an LF copy analysis by Abe and Hoshi (1993, 1997), a PF deletion analysis by Kira (1997) and Sohn (2001), a PF string deletion analysis by Mukai (2003), etc. This paper observes that VLC feeds an environment where otherwise unlicensed plurality-dependent expressions in Korean (e.g., dummy plural marker -tul,reciprocal selo 'each other', and distributive adverb kakkak 'each') are licensed and discusses some theoretical implications that the observation makes as to the syntax of VLC. It will be shown in particular that the feeding relation in VLC is not accounted for by any of the analyses mentioned above but is best accommodated under a multiple dominance analysis along the lines of Wilder (1997, 1999).