Korean Kes-Relative Clauses as Stages

Recently, M.-J. Kim (2008) provided a reformulation of the Relevancy Condition on kes-relative clauses (kes-RCs) (Kim, Y.-B. 2002), the so-called internally headed relative clauses in Korean. In her analysis, the bipartite conditions of Kim (2002), one involving simultaneity between the main and the relative clause and the other involving a ‘resultant theme’, are collapsed into one involving a temporal overlap between the main and the relative clauses. In Kim (2008), the kes-RC is assumed to describe a temporary state which overlaps with the main event (i) if the relative clause contains an atelic predicate and the aspect is progressive, or (ii) if the relative clause contains a telic predicate and the aspect is perfect as well as progressive. This paper, however, claims that M.-J. Kim’s analysis still suffers from empirical problems, based on new type of examples; they show that (i) the relative clause can contain an atelic, perfect predicate if it is a stative type and (ii) the relative clause denote the volition or prediction of the speaker. The present paper proposes that kes-RCs denote a stage, which instantiates at the time of the main clause’s event.