Y.-H. Kim (2007) has presented an analysis of the alternation among Korean dative/locative case particles within the framework of the minimalist program. The gist of his analysis lies in his claim that the alternation among the case particles is influenced by their associated nouns’ animacy, a kind of gender according to his claim, and that their alternation is determined by agreement in the sense of the minimalist program. Recently, Kim and Chung (2015) have come up with an analysis of the honorific system of Korean from a totally different point of view. They treat kkey ‘to(honorific)’ as a realization of the honorific feature [+hon] whether the associated noun is assigned nominative or dative. They also make criticism of Y.-H. Kim’s (2007) analysis while claiming that agreement is not an operation in narrow syntax but one caused by feature sharing at the PF component as discussed by Bobaljik (2008). In this paper, we will take a critical look at Kim and Chung’s (2015) analysis and make a point of its flaws, and then try to present some solutions to Y.-H. Kim’s (2007) real problems.

• 김용하(안동대학교)