Korean ECM: Semantic and Pragmatic Factors

In this way it resembles the English ECM construction. But as we’ll see, there are some important differences. To start with, the embedded clause is finite, and shows agreement. Also, the embedded clause has the complementizer -ko, so in GB terms we would say it is a CP rather than an IP. We’ll see other differences later. Today we will be defending the view that the Korean ECM construction is actually a so-called ‘null operator’ construction, comparable to the English toughconstruction. An analysis of this kind was proposed by Jae-Gyun Song in his 1994 dissertation; also Ki-Sun Hong made a similar proposal. First I will summarize Song’s main arguments, which are of a syntactic nature, and make some related comments. Then we will add to that our observation that the ECM construction resembles certain null operator constructions semantically as well, in that the embedded proposition cannot denote a specific event. Instead it receives a generic or stative interpretation.