Internally Headed Relative Clause Constructions in Korean

This paper attempts to analyze some grammatical aspects of the so called internally-headed relative clause construction in Korean. This paper proposes that the meaning of the external head kes is underspecified in the sense that its semantic content is filled in by co-indexing it to the internal head under appropriate conditions. This paper also argues that interpretation of kes is determined by the verb following it. Dealing also with the pragmatics of the construction, this paper argues that the crucial characteristics of the construction in question resides in pragmatics rather than in semantics.