On the nature of null WH-phrases in Korean

Abstract

Although both wh-phrases and corresponding question endings in Korean may be overt or covert, their combination is not entirely free. As observed in Chung (2008), an overt question ending requires an overt wh-phrase, though not vice versa. The restriction in wh-questions in Korean makes an interesting implication as to the theory of null arguments in the language. This paper tries to show that,as far as the distributional restriction on the null argument associated with a wh-phrase is concerned, a pro approach to null arguments is favored over an ellipsis or (flexible) topic approach. This is because the former approach only requires an independently motivated condition on the relation between a wh-phrase and its corresponding question ending, while the latter two do not properly account for the restriction on the null argument associated with a wh-phrase.