Derivation of [XP-NUN?] Revisited: Reply to Park (2021)

Abstract

Daeho Chung. 2022. Derivation of [XP-NUN?] Revisited: Reply to Park (2021). Studies in Modern Grammar 115, 51-76. Contra Chung’s (2021a) contrastive topic (CT) movement analysis of the so-called contrastive topic fragment (CTF) of the form [XP-NUN?], Park (2021) claims the following: (i) The pre-NUN remnant can be a contrastive focus (CF) (as well as a CT); (ii) the CTF is derived from a cleft-like wh-construction with ettehkey ‘how’ in the pivot; and (iii) the remnants undergo scrambling. This paper makes the following three points: (i) given the generally accepted definitions of topic, the pre-NUN element behaves like a CT, as suggested in Chung (2021a); (ii) Park’s cleft-like construction based derivation faces non-trivial problems, especially with respect to the available interpretation of the CTF; and (iii) Park’s generalized question [XP-NUN etteh/ettehkey ‘how’ ...?] can in fact be viewed as a derived structure due to a clausal replacement by etteh/ettehkey, analogous to the kuleh/kulehkey replacement entertained in Park (2013) and Sohn (2019).