Che-Gyong Im. 2000. Licensing of "-ka/-i" at Morphophonemic Level. Studies in Modern Grammar 20, 47-69. There are a lot of controversies on how to explain the behaviors of "-ka/-i" in the framework of minimalist program suggested in Chomsky (I993, 1995a, 1995b). Recent studies on the Nominative Case in Korean, assuming Case feature checking, successfully explains the typical Korean sentences bearing structural Nominative Case as long as they classify Korean as a configurational language. These approaches, however, face some problems when they treat "-ka/-i" in Multiple Nominative Constructions(MNCs), Nominative Object Constructions(NOCs) only as Nominative marker. In this paper, we will suggest that the odd behaviors of "-ka/-i" can be explained if we assume two different levels at which this marker is licensed: syntactic level(before Spell-out) and morphophonemic(PF) level. Converting the hedges of Case theory and the functions of "-ka/-i" into the constraints of Optimality Theory, we attempt to solve the problems raised in the licensing of "-ka/-i".

• Che Gyong Im