This study explores the morpho-syntactic properties of the ‘overgenerated be’ that appears between a subject and a thematic verb (e.g., she is go home) produced by Korean-speaking English learners, and discusses how the overgenerated be reflects L2 inflection development. I argue that the overgenerated be initially functions as a topic marker, but then develops into a verbal inflection. A total of 377 writings of 23 first-year Korean middle school students were examined for the study. The students were divided into three groups based on their English proficiency. The overgenerated be was found mostly in the two lowest proficiency groups: the lowest proficiency group used the overgenerated be as a topic marker, while the medium proficiency group used the ‘overgenerated be’ as a verbal inflection to mark tense.

Ⅰ. Introduction
Ⅱ. Literature Review
　1. Interlanguage development from TopP stage to SP stage
　2. Overgenerated be: A topic marker or a functional category?
Ⅲ. Methodology of the Current Study
　1. The research hypotheses
　2. Study participants
　3. Data collection
　4. Data analysis
Ⅳ. Results
　1. Subject forms: Double subject and null subject
　2. Subject-verb agreement
　3. The Overgenerated be
Ⅴ. Discussion
Ⅵ. Conclusion
References

• Kitaek Kim(University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa)