Syntactically-triggered VP information focus

This dissertation highlights parallel constraints observed in head-internal relatives in Korean and existential there-sentences in English. By analyzing kes in the head-external position as an expletive whose function is similar to that of there in existential there-sentences, it is claimed that both constructions structurally license VP information focus in order to highlight the internal head and the postverbal DP, respectively, within the VP focus position. Hence, the argument externalization out of the VP thematic domain does not take place and the respective argument remains within the VP. The presence of expletive is, therefore, required for the EPP feature checking, forcing both constructions to be subject to the VP-domain specific syntactic/semantic constraints triggered by the information focus effect.; By viewing the problem as a structural phenomenon in interaction with the discourse information structure of the argument, the proposed analysis claims to resolve the main drawbacks of the previous analyses in syntactic, semantic and discourse functional approaches, which suffer from criticisms pertaining to an entirely syntactic/semantic condition or a pragmatic condition.; Furthermore, this work proposes that English there-sentences and cleft-sentences both license "syntactically-triggered" information focus versus contrastive focus, respectively.; In sum, by treating the definiteness effect and the predicate restriction as the unified phenomena of the structural encoding of VP information focus, the proposed analysis successfully identifies the main triggering factor behind the puzzling syntactic/semantic constraints in there-sentences and head-internal relatives in Korean.