Divergent patterns of accusative drop in Korean object dislocation

Abstract

This study investigates how omitting the accusative case marker affects the acceptability of Korean canonical, scrambled, and right-dislocated constructions. An acceptability judgment experiment reveals that right dislocation incurs a greater penalty than scrambling when the object is marked with the accusative case. However, when the accusative marker is omitted, scrambled constructions pattern similarly to canonical ones, whereas right-dislocated constructions behave differently. Specifically, the penalty for accusative drop in right dislocation is substantially reduced. These findings suggest that accusative drop in both canonical and scrambled constructions stems from processing costs associated with morphological omission, while in right dislocation, the reduced penalty results from a PF-level mechanism of extra deletion. This mechanism, which permits non-constituent deletion under adjacency, is unavailable in canonical and scrambled contexts. Thus, the results support a biclausal movement-plus-ellipsis analysis of right dislocation, where surface omission of the case marker is licensed through extra deletion triggered by PF deletion, differentiating it structurally and derivationally from scrambling and canonical configurations.