Chegyung Im. 2017. Word Formation and Merge of Korean Personal Pronouns Based on Feature Agreement Theory and Distributed Morphology. Studies in Modern Grammar 96, 23-50. Most of the previous studies on the personal pronouns in Korean have depended on the typological studies of English pronouns. I argue, in this study, that the recent theories of the Distributed Morphology and the Strongest Uniformity Hypothesis show the process of morphological formation of Korean pronouns and featural agreement in the process of their Merge. I also argue that the hyper structure of Speech Act Phrase is needed to license the computational process among the speaker, the hearer, and the arguments in the sentence.

The purpose of the paper is to suggest a licensing condition of caki based on Distributed Morphology. The economical burden caused by selecting a single syntactic object and interpreting the same object can be alleviated by reducing the process of computation. Merger of the ROOT of 'caki' and N, with the late lexical insertion can explain the complex distribution of caki.

The primary purpose of the paper is to show that such phenomena as the cliticization of weak pronouns, TH/EX in there constructions and the wh-movement from extracted nominals can fall under one generalization called "defocusing", a pragmatic operation that cannot be applied twice to the same syntactic object. We argue, in this paper, TH/EX is not a PF operation but a pragmatic operation before Spell-Out. In our model, syntactic objects should go through all the syntactic and/or pragmatic operations before they reach the interface and lexical insertion is a 24hr outlet rather than a one-fell-swoop operation.

Chegyong Im. 2003. Processing of Ambiguous Sentences: An Optimality Theoretic Approach. Studies in Modern Grammar 31, 71-88. Our approach claims that the same principles that govern syntactic structures also contribute to a theory of sentence processing. We also argue, following Gibson & Boihier (1998), that the ambiguities can be resolved by the strategy of Optimality Theory i.e., by picking out the most optimal candidate with the rank of the constraints converted from the principles of Minimalist Program. The constrains suggested here are Thematic Valency, Node Conservativity and Node Locality to explain the preference among the ambiguous interpretations as well as Deictic Condition to select the antecedent for the Pros and anaphors.

Chegyong Im. 2001. Person Constraint and Licensing of Expletive Constructions. Studies in Modern Grammar 25, 29-53. Some structures allow number agreement but not first/second person agreement. That would follow if the [person] feature of T reduces to [3 person] (the default choice). We will show, in this paper, the environment in which this phenomenon happens, suggesting a universal constraint for the locative inversion constructions and expletive constructions. The other major purpose of the paper is to illustrate the licensing of expletive constructions in the framework of Rizzi (1997) and Platzack (2000). We argue that the different syntactic behavior between there type expletives and it type expletives can be explained in terms of Multiple Interfaces. We will also try to show that the structure of TECs in Icelandic can be neatly identified in our proposal.

Im Che-Gyong. 1996. The Thematic Structure of Ergative Construction. Studies in Modern Grammatical Theories 9: 77-96. Ergative sentences in English and Korean show some asymmetries with their accusative counterparts in such constructions as imperatives, prenominal -ing forms, and dative or double object construction. The primary purpose of this paper is to show that these asymmetries can be explained by assuming VP-Internal Subject Hypothesis, Thematic Hierarchy in VP-Shell Structure and Minimal Link Condition. I also found that causatives cannot co-occur with ergatives and this can be explained by the principles suggested by the Minimalists. The results from the study are the following: (i) Asymmetries in imperatives, prenominal -ing forms can be explained by the difference in argument structure between ergatives and accusatives: the former have only one argument with Theme role but the latter have two arguments, Agent and Theme. (ii) Case theory alone cannot solve the ungrammaticality of ergative sentences in which the goal is the surface subject. We need the following thernatic hierarchy: Agent > Theme > Goal plus MLC suggested in Chomsky(1993). (iii) MLC also explains the non co-occurrence of Korean ergatives with causatives; a supporting evidence that MLC comprises the Specified Subject Condition as well as the notion of government in barrierhood.

Im Che-Gong. 1996. The Sbructure of Small Clause and Control. Studies in Modern Grammatical Theories 8: 153-180. There are various proposals regarding the proper analysis of the structure of small clauses(SCs): Chomsky(1981)`s dichotomy depends on his θ-Theory, Stowell(1983)`s analysis rests on X`-scheme and Government Principle and Rothstein(1983)`s proposal is based on Predication Theory. But none of them are without problems. I shall try to show in this article that SCs have the same structure with Double Object Constructions and some Control Structures. I assume Binary Branching suggested in Kayne(1984), VP Internal Subject Hypothesis suggested by many linguists, Larson(1988)`s VP-Shell Structure and his version of Minimal Distance Principle originally suggested in Rosenbaum(1970). I also adopt the structure for SCs suggested in Bowers(1993) and modify it to develop a general theory of Transitive Verb Structure. My suggestions are the following: 1) SCs are contained in the VP-Shell Structure like [vp NP [v` V(e) [vp NP(e) [v` V (NP)]]]] at D-level 2) TV(transitive verb) + C(complement) is compositionally predicated of an SS (secondary subject(object)) and TVC + SS is predicated of a PS(primary subject) 3) An SS (object/theme) can be passivized, but a complement(goal, source/dative) can`t unless it is raised to SS position by Dative Shift 4) There is no structural difference between Complement SCs and Adjunct SCs except the position of the maximal projection of secondary predicate, which depends on the position of its subject 5) Secondary predicate has PRO as its subject, which is controlled by revised version of MDP 6) The structure suggested here observes the Thematic Hierarchy (Agent > Theme > Goal(Source)) and Binding Principle.

In second language acquisition, some of the parameterized principles of UG seem to be obstacles rather than aids with the result of many errors in the actual use and interpretation of the target language. The purpose of this study is to suggest some ways to learn and use properly English anaphors and pronominals which are reported to be one of the most difficult categories for Korean students. The results obtained from the study are summarized as follows: 1) The blind application of Binding principles for English anaphora to Korean anaphoric expressions should be reconsidered. Parametric studies on the governing category for caki and ki should be counted in teaching or interpreting-self and he(she). 2) Honorification in Korean should be taken into consideration. Many Korean anaphoric expressions have no equivalents in English, which has no way to show social difference between speaker and hearer. 3) Ki, which is of relatively recent origin, is not widely accepted as equivalent for he. Some studies even show that ki is not a pronominal, but a deictic expression. From the above results, we can conclude that many errors in learning and using English anaphora can be attributed to the fact that simple translation method has been used in teaching English anaphora without considering the different parametric values between the two languages.