Sentential Specifiers in the Korean Clause Structure

The Korean double nominative construction exhibits various properties distinguished not only from ordinary subject-object clauses but also from nominative complement constructions. Particularly, the second NP, not the initial NP, triggers the honorific agreement with the verb. I argue that the first NP of the construction is identified as a sentential specifier which exists in addition to the subject (cf. Major subject in Yoon 2004). The sentential specifier can be justified as the characteristic of the topic-prominent language in the sense of Li and Thompson (1976). Specifically I claim that any elements that satisfy the aboutness condition can be the sentential specifier. Finally, I show that HPSG’s valence value and an optional lexical rule provides an elegant treatment of the construction; SPR list in a sentence level can be utilized for the sentential specifier (cf. Kim et al. 2007).