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 investigates Nominative Case drop/ellipsis or unmarking in Korean. Kwon and Zribi-Hert (2008) and H. Lee (2020) claim that Nominative Case unmarking occurs in direct perception situations where identification of the agent role of an event participant (represented by a Nom Case-less subject NP) can be grounded in the here and now of utterance time. They go on to provide an information structure-theoretic account of the interpretive contrast between Nom Case-less and Nom Case-marked subject NPs in terms of f(ocus)-structure. They propose that Nom Case-less subject NPs are restructured as the matrix focus of the neutral thetic f-structure. This paper explores a new avenue, arguing that Nominative Case unmarking follows not from the information structure of the whole sentence in question, but essentially from the syntactic structure and interpretational gamut of Korean determiner-less bare common NPs where Nom Case is not marked. More specifically, it is proposed below that in Korean, contextually salient entities tend to be grammatically encoded by Nom Case-less bare NPs, thus the Nom Case unmarking option being attributed to the syntax and semantics of bare common NPs in general in this language.

This paper investigates three types of dative-marking causative verbs in Korean: caused motion verbs, adversative passive verbs, and periphrastic causative verbs that unmarkedly select for dativeparticled NP. Caused motion verbs arguably entertain lexically-introduced causative features, adversative passives involve lexico-syntactically oriented causative and passive morpheme(s), periphrastic causative verbs involve a syntactically active causative component. We examined the processing aspects of these three types of verbs, adopting the event-related potential (ERP) paradigm of superior temporal resolution. We crucially employed the dative/ ACC alternation well-known in Korean syntax to come up with the potentially anomalous or marked experimental conditions. The results are: motion verbs and adversative passive verbs with ACC NP, relative to ones with DAT NP, recorded the bi-phasic ERP components: N400 and reduced P600. On the other hand, periphrastic causative verbs with ACC NP, compared to ones with DAT NP, registered only reduced P600. Taken together, only the syntactically-active causative component licences the ACC Case on the NP whose dative particle is dropped. Motion verbs and adversative passive verbs are taken to fail to complete semantic integration with the preceding ACC NP, therefore attempting to undergo syntactic reanalysis.

This paper assesses the last two-decade studies of null arguments in East Asian languages. Unlike the predecessors, these studies have concentrated lopsidedly on the distribution of null arguments in VP/TP ellipsis or anaphora contexts, thus hampering the proper identification of null arguments in these languages. Grounded on the observation that null arguments cannot be used as indefinites in radically pro-drop languages (Holmberg 2016), we go on to note that in non-ellipsis or non-anaphora contexts, null arguments in East Asian languages are either unique weak or anaphoric strong definites. Particularly, the latter use of null arguments sheds new lights on accounting for the long-standing puzzles such as Huang’s (1984) paradigm in Mandarin Chinese and Abe’s (2009, 2014) paradigm in Japanese, on top of the sundry distributions of null arguments in Korean. We suggest that null arguments in VP/TP ellipsis or anaphora contexts in East Asian languages can receive a proper analysis based on their syntactic identity in non-ellipsis or non-anaphora contexts.

This paper investigates the long-standing issue of how scrambling as a word order- changing operation is to be understood in light of the general theory of structure building, particularly vis-à-vis Chomsky’s (2013, 2005) Labeling Theory. First, noting that case or inflectional markers are realized on clausal dependent elements in-situ in Korean, we argue that they come about to record the output of labeling in the wake of the Merge operation during structure building. In other words, they are reflections of labeling in head-complement or XP-YP relations in tandem with theta-marking, predication, and predicate modification. Second, noting that scrambling is an adjunction operation via non-A, non-operator movement, we argue that a scrambled element enters into licensing relation just like an adjunct. Neither the former nor the latter can be accommodated into the properly labeled structure in the syntactic component. They rather resort to processes such as semantic predication or predicate modification at the interface to resolve the problem with labeling.

This paper investigates the syntax of multiple wh’s in Korean, especially when such multiple wh’s are of reduplicative form. Particularly focusing on locality in deriving a pair-list interpretation in the construction at issue, we argue that the clause-boundedness restriction follows from quantifier raising (QR) and absorption that multiple wh’s undergo. At the same time, we examine how Dayal’s (1996) wh-triangle and Watanabe’s (1992) additional wh effects materialize in Korean multiple wh-constructions, providing a comparativesyntactic account for the issues at hand. Meantime, we also investigate the issue of how Pesetsky’s (1987) D-linking comes into play in the construction in question.

This paper aims to investigate Korean advanced L2 English learners’ strategies for ellipsis resolution during sentence processing. Ellipsis resolution is known to involve several stages of information processing from the initial step of detecting an ellipsis-licensing element by the parser to the final stage of integrating the ellipsis site with the information retrieved from the antecedent of the ellipsis site. In examining these steps, we have manipulated three factors: (i) TP vs. VP-ellipsis; (ii) two types of discourse coherence relations (resemblance(-contrast) vs. cause-effect relations); (iii) voice match vs. mismatch. We found through the ERP recordings that voice mismatch in TP ellipsis elicited N400, followed by P600, irrespective of discourse coherence relations. In contrast, voice mismatch in VP-ellipsis registered N400 only in resemblance(-contrast) relation, but not in cause-effect relation. These findings lead us to conclude that Korean advanced L2 learners of English seem to undergo the full sequence of processing stages required for ellipsis resolution.

Myung-Kwan Park and Sunjoo Choi. 2017. On English Verbal Anaphor: VP Replacement and VP Ellipsis. Studies in Modern Grammar 96, 89-107. It has been noted that VP replacement do so is not allowed with verbal passives, though it is with unaccusatives (Hallman 2013). This paper develops an identity-based account for this contrast. Bruening (2016) recently reports that VP replacement is permitted even with passives in some restricted environments. Reformulating Miller's (2011) three options for VP anaphor (i.e., VP replacement and VP ellipsis), Bruening (2016) suggests two factors governing the choice of VP anaphor. Departing from Bruening (2016), however, this paper provides an identity-based account for the issue concerned, by demonstrating that VP replacement and VP ellipsis are derived in a similar way but they require different operational domains in tandem with the identity domain for VP replacement or ellipsis. Grounded on some key representative examples, we suggest that passives as well as unaccusatives require syntactic identity, but that they are distinguished in terms of the category where VP replacement or ellipsis applies. Furthermore, the difference between VP replacement and VP ellipsis concerning the size of operational domain can be extended to account for causative-inchoative alternations. In doing so, we argue that meeting the identity condition is crucial for VP replacement as well as VP ellipsis.

This paper is to argue that the apparently fragmentary answer phrase XP right after the polarity answer particle (PAP) such as ung ‘yes’ or ani ‘no’ is not a run-of-the-mill fragment but a right-dislocated (RD-ed) element. Using negative polarity items and indefinites as a RD-ed element, we show that the PAP itself is also a remnant derived from elision of the answering full clause, which in turn provides a right structural context for right dislocation of another XP remnant. We go on further to show that RD-ed elements in the construction at issue display the same pattern of syntactic behaviors as those in the cannonical RD construction, particularly in terms of island effects, the ‘full’ host clause requirement, Case/voice match, and specificational coordination.

This paper provides a unified analysis for the three types of right displacement in English as the clause-final right-displaced element has in common the function of specifying/elaborating on what has been left referentially indeterminate or blank in the preceding clause. We take the surface make-up of the three constructions at issue to indicate that the right-displaced element has coordinate structure relation with the preceding 'propositional' constituent such as vP or TP. Based on this initial conception of the three constructions at issue, we make three points. First, we argue that these constructions involve clausal coordination and their surface forms are derived by eliding the second conjunct except for the base-generated/ leftward-moved element outside it. Second, we show that the economy of structure-building is at work in the formation of the two coordinate conjuncts in the constructions, accounting for the well-known Right Roof constraint or clause-boundedness condition. Third, we also demonstrate that the ban on P-stranding heavy NP shift of a certain argument element follows from the unavailability of an implicit argument to the relevant position of the first conjunct.

The paper also offers a supplementary analysis of the two subtypes of the vague action verb, using the hybrid model of lexical conceptual structure and syntactic argument structure. This paper investigates the etiology of the contrast between Korean/Japanese (K/J) and Chinese in the availability of a quantificational/sloppy reading to the null subject. We attribute this contrast to the asymmetry between K/J and Chinese in the Case/topic marking system. K/J employs both overt subject/ object Case marker and topic marker, but Chinse does not have either of them. The latter language rather uses structural positions to code grammatical and topic relations. Though an object element in Chinese uses different positions (i.e., post-verbal and clause-intial positions) to indicate its grammatical relation and topichood, a subject element uses the same clause-initial position to do so. Thus, the element in clauseinitial position apparently regarded as a subject element is grammaticalized into taking up the marked role of a topic in this language. Mutatis mutandis, its null counterpart or null subject is only construed as a definite topic, which bars it from being interpreted with a quantificational/sloppy reading.

This paper proposed a linear mixed-effects model and offered a flexible statistical analysis for controlling potential random effects and identifying significant fixed effects in linguistic data involving island structure. We started from the initial thesis that the two variables in the materials designed in our acceptability-rating experiment, namely GAP-POSITION and STRUCTURE, exert significant fixed effects, and then we tried to come up with an analysis where some interactive aspects of the two variables vis-à-vis other variables like TYPE and PARTICIPANT are taken into account. It was suggested in this paper that the proposed linear mixed-effects model provides the most parsimonious and statistically valid analysis. Specifically it was shown that island effects are most likely to be due to grammatical constraints, considering that the two variables GAP-POSITION and STRUCTURE interact to produce statistically significant effects, and thus it is safe to say that Korean L2 learners of English are as sensitive to the island vs. non-island distinction as L1 native speakers have been reported to be.

This paper examines multiple Fragmenting in Korean to argue that it can be accounted for in the most effective way by the thesis that Fragmenting applies to cleft structure. We first propose that the underlying structure of the single or multiple fragment answer is the cleft construction where the copula links the subject cleft clause and the pre-copula inferential cleft clause. In deriving its surface structure, the former clause takes the pro strategy in identity with the preceding question sentence, and the latter clause allows survivor(s) to escape out to the periphery of it, which undergoes clausal ellipsis. This conception of the fragment construction sheds new lights on accounting for some peculiar effects of the overt or the covert copula on the immediately preceding Case marker/postposition-less survivor. In addition, this paper provides an explanation for the now celebrated clausemate requirement for the survivors in the construction at issue.

This paper examines the exceptional behavior of P-stranding under Sluicing in some languages which do not allow P-stranding under regular whmovement (cf. Merchant (2001)). Spanish, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese and Indonesian, in contrast to Greek and Czech, are in principle a prepositionpied- piping language, but they allow P-stranding under Sluicing that arguably derives from cleft structure or via repair-by-ellipsis. Still critical to this process of P-stranding under Sluicing is the identity-in-ellipsis requirement that the morpho-syntactic form of the surviving wh-expression in the sluiced clause matches the one that its overt or covert correlate expression would potentially take if it underwent regular wh-movement. Extending this generalization to ‘Sluicing’ and ‘Fragmenting’ in Korean, we show that the somewhat unexpected postposition stranding and omission of the wh- and fragment expression in these constructions of Korean also derive from (pseudo-)cleft structure, meeting the identity/parallelism condition on ellipsis.

This paper investigated the role of specificity by Korean learners in processing the article choice parameter. To this end, Korean learners of EFL completed the online and the offline semantic acceptability-rating tasks. The online results indicated that the Korean learners of EFL at both the advanced and the intermediate level of the proficiency fluctuated between the specificity and definiteness parameter settings. Especially for the intermediate Korean learners of EFL, the response time of the [-definite, +specific] condition showed little difference from other conditions, implying that they adhered to the definiteness parameter setting. The offline results, in contrast, indicated that the Korean learners of EFL at both the advanced and the intermediate level of the proficiency adhered to the definiteness parameter setting. It seems that there is a possibility that the intermediate learners were adopting the definiteness parameter setting, which is different from the claims made in Ionin, Ko and Wexler’s (2004) specificity hypothesis.

This paper examines the identity of null objects in Korean. For the last two decades, null objects in this language have been argued to derive from either base-generation as an empty pronoun or ellipsis/deletion. To resolve this controversial issue, we scrutinize some previous arguments supporting one analysis or the other for null objects. We set forth a background for the discussion of them, starting with the diagnostic that Chung et al. (2011) uses to distinguish VP and TP ellipsis in English. We then turn to Hoji's (1998) and Ahn and Cho's (2011) test utilizing the availability of a sloppy-like reading, and then to Hoji's (2003) and Bae and Kim's (2012) probe employing R-expressions. Showing that all these diagnostics are not effective as much as they have been claimed to be, we use the new test capitalizing on the extraction out of an ellipsis site, arguing that null objects in Korean derive from deletion/ellipsis rather than base-generation as pro.