From an L2 experimental perspective, the present paper aims at shedding new lights on the nature and the source of exhaustiveness in the two English constructions: (i) ‘it’-clefts; ‘only’-foci. We report experimental evidence that the cancellation of the exhaustiveness construal normally available to the constructions at issue gives rise to different processing costs. Specifically, we provide the results by comparing the ERP patterns that arise when the (marked) cancellation of exhaustiveness is processed in either ‘it’-clefts or ‘only’-foci. Our findings show that during on-line sentence processing, highly proficient Korean English leaners can discern the two different types of exhaustiveness, which in turn indicates that they can recruit different levels of linguistic structure.

This paper is aimed to investigate the structure of Korean pseudo-cleft constructions with the bound noun kes in subject position, by examining the asymmetry between two kess in the subject position of pseudo-clefts and in the pre-copula position. The paper argues that the former can represent a human entity as well as non-human elements because it is universal. It denotes a set of presuppositionality, and thus, it has to raise to SpecTopicP through the predicational inversion. As a result, it precedes the foci in specificational constructions. The other is specific, denoting only a non-human material thing. Thus they don’t appear in specificational reading but in predicational, which requires agreement between the subject and the complement. Conclusively, Korean has two different types of kes in pseudo-cleft constructions.