초록 열기/닫기 버튼
We observe the following generalization regarding word order between two types of relative clauses in Korean: when a noun is modified by an event relative clause and a state relative clause, the event clause comes first and the state clause comes after. In considering this generalization,we discuss, one by one, several putative factors which would account for it. After making sure that syntactic, phonological, or pragmatic factors are not relevant to the word order in question, we finally claim that the determining factor is a semantic one. In particular, we propose that there is a specificity condition on the merging of modifiers, according to which less specific modifiers merge with a noun before more specific ones. Note that we define the notion of specificity in terms of set scale:a modifier with a larger denotation is less specific than a modifier with a smaller denotation. State relative clauses are less specific modifiers than event relative clauses since the denotation of the former type is larger than that of the latter type. Given the specificity condition, a state relative clause should merge first with a noun, and an event relative clause should merge after. This merge order results in the word order of event relative clause > state relative clause in the case of Korean, which is a head-final language.
