Scrambling and Binding in Korean: An Experimental Investigation

Abstract

This article provides an experiment-based study on scrambling involved in binding. There have been a large number of attempts to analyze scrambling in terms of A/A’-distinctions. These analyses are dependent upon the canonical Binding Theory(BT). Binding relations, however, do not always determine which copy of a scrambled phrase is interpreted. Besides, different acceptability judgments on the same sentence among researchers have been one of the impediments to proposing a far-reaching theory regarding scrambling. For this reason, this paper conducted an acceptability judgment testing to scrutinize the mixed nature of scrambling and binding. In the experiment, ‘scrambling effects’ are observed in all but one of the conditions; it suggests that scrambling-involved data can be analyzed by means of the inactiveness of the base copy. The parallels of the pronoun ku and the anaphor caki observed in scrambled contexts support the idea that the dependence on the BT for understanding the nature of scrambling is problematic.