On Korean Internally Headed Relative Clauses

Korean has a special kind of relative construction in which the head noun surfaces clause-internally. In that sense, the construction is called internally headed relative clause (IHRC or head internal relative clause HIRC). The IHRC is peculiar in that it has the shape of the complement clause of a factive predicate but is used as the complement of a non-factive predicate referring to its posited head. As the IHRC is not a phenomenon uniquely observed in Korean, much work has been devoted to finding its nature in many languages, and fruitful results have been presented. As for Korean IHRCs in particular, Jhang (1994), Chung (1996, 1999), Y.B. Kim (2002), Chung and Kim (2003), M.J. Kim (2004, 2007, 2009), Lee (2006) etc. have clarified many truths about IHRCs. Of these pieces of productive work, our special interest is in M.J. Kim`s (2004, 2007, 2009) and Chung`s (1996, 1999) analyses, in which the IHRC is treated in parallel with the complement of the direct perception construction. In this representation, I try to suggest an analysis that supports theirs but treats the construction in question in a slightly different way. The analysis of the IHRC in this presentation crucially involves a special type of double object construction that is closely related to the IHRC, and says something about the nature of IHRC.