Focus Domain Expansion in the Korean Delimiter Construction: A Parallel Merge Account

Abstract

This paper observes that the focus domain of a delimiter can be expanded beyond the delimiter-marked phrase such that focus can be associated not only with an element within the delimiter-marked phrase, but also with an element outside of it, more interestingly with two or more elements that do not even appear to constitute a syntactic unit. It is shown, however, that, despite the initial impression to the contrary, the focus domain expansion phenomenon in Korean can be subsumed under the general condition that focus association is operative in terms of c-command, as far as parallel merge between co-dependents of a predicate is motivated in languages like Korean (cf. Watanabe 1992, Sohn 1994, Chung 1996, 1997, and Takano 2002, among others).