This study tries to examine various sexist expressions in English and propose their alternatives. Given the close relationship between language and thought, sexist expressions in English reflect English speakers’ androcentric assumptions in male-dominated traditional social structures. We see sexist phenomena in English from generic masculine forms, sexism in word orders, marked feminine expressions etc. These sexist expressions can be replaced by alternatives that do not substantially change meanings and grammaticality. Generic masculine forms can be replaced by singular they, he or she, first and second person pronouns, and one. Sexist word orders can use one word expressions or both masculine-feminine and feminine-masculine orders. Marked feminine expressions can adopt universal and gender-neutral words instead. These politically correct expressions will lead English language speakers to an elevated social sense of gender equality.

Eunsuk Lee. 2017. An Analysis of Motivations for Emotional Expressions with English Color Terms. Studies in Modern Grammar 95, 123-139. This study attempts to investigate emotional expressions with English color terms and to suggest an underlying motivation for them. Color terms are widely used to express human basic emotions (e.g., joy, anger, sadness, and fear). Following are some examples in English. Pink is used to represent joy; red, black, purple, and green are used to represent anger; black, blue, brown, gray are used to represent sadness; white, gray, black, yellow, blue are used to represent fear. Expression of emotions with English color terms can be analyzed by four motivation factors: (1) the metonymy mechanism using facial colors, (2) the metaphorical model derived from opposition between light and dark, (3) Hippocrates' four humors theory, and (4) the influence of European Romanticist trends in literary theory.

This study considers the criteria of genitive alternation in English, i.e. the alternation between s- and of- genitive cases, in a unified approach under a single criterion. The factors that are believed to influence the choice between the two types of genitives include animacy, topicality, syntactic weight, a final sibilant in the possessor, etc. Those factors interact with each other complicatedly in the choice between the two types of genitive constructions, and some overlaps among them exist implicitly. This paper suggests that the overlapped factor is the ‘efficiency’ in the speaker’s information delivery in language use. We can get an economic result if the multiple allegedly working criteria for the choice between the genitive case constructions are replaced by the single factor ‘efficiency.’

Eunsuk Lee. 2016. The Basis for Use of Singular they: From Historical, Semantic, and Cognitive Perspectives. Studies in Modern Grammar 90, 31-43. This study investigates the basis for use of singular they from a few different perspectives. Firstly, from a historical perspective, the singular they is not something that appeared all of a sudden in modern English since it has been used for a long period of time. Singular they did not appear by mistake as its use can be found in the writings of many respected authors. Secondly, considering the notional concord and the referential ambiguity of plural pronouns from a viewpoint of semantics, there are two different uses of singular they - one is to indicate indefinite pronouns and the other is to specify generic nouns. Lastly, from a cognitive perspective, singular they is a cognitively efficient substitute for he or she, or it seems to be cognitively more efficient than those pronouns. Considering all of the perspectives listed above, it is arguable that the use of singular they should not be proscribed like they has been by normative grammarians, but accepted as a change in the use of English pronouns.

This study investigates the basis for use of singular they from a few different perspectives. Firstly, from a historical perspective, the singular they is not something that appeared all of a sudden in modern English since it has been used for a long period of time. Singular they did not appear by mistake as its use can be found in the writings of many respected authors. Secondly, considering the notional concord and the referential ambiguity of plural pronouns from a viewpoint of semantics, there are two different uses of singular they - one is to indicate indefinite pronouns and the other is to specify generic nouns. Lastly, from a cognitive perspective, singular they is a cognitively efficient substitute for he or she, or it seems to be cognitively more efficient than those pronouns. Considering all of the perspectives listed above, it is arguable that the use of singular they should not be proscribed like they has been by normative grammarians, but accepted as a change in the use of English pronouns.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the empirical adequacy of the event-based language typology with special reference to English and Korean. The event-based language typology classifies languages into I- and D-languages based on the importance of the initial and terminal bounds of an event with respects to the way the relevant languages use in the recognition of eventiveness. In I-languages, in which the initial bound of an event is important, activity and accomplishment are recognized as events, while in D-languages, where the terminal bound of an event is important, achievement and accomplishment are so recognized. English and Korean, the target languages of this study, show the characteristics of I- and D-languages respectively. In the case of English, we can confirm that it falls into D-languages based on the fact (1) that event cancellation is impossible and (2) that causative reading is possible in terms of the delimitation of predicates. In the case of Korean, we can tell that it belongs to I-languages as (3) event cancellation is possible and (4) only NPs that can work as an initiator can be the subject in the position of [Spec, FP-init].

This study seeks answers to the following two questions on olfaction and odor. First, what is the olfactory lexical gap phenomenon? Second, given lack of odor lexicon, how do English speakers express smells? In order to answer these questions, first, we explained the olfactory lexical gap phenomenon from neuro‐physiological, socio‐cultural, and lingua‐cognitive aspects, and confirmed that English speakers, in order to express smells, use linguistic tools such as hedonic judgments, the sources of odor, denominal adjectives, deverbal adjectives, adjacent senses, and reliance on memories, experiences and situations.