The nature of fronted wh-words in Korean type languages has been a topic of great controversy, with the widely held assumption being that they behave in a uniform fashion (Hoji 1985, Saito 1989, Takahashi 1993, 1994, Choe 1994, Cheng 1997, Bošković 1999). I challenge this common view, following the original proposal by Choi (2007b), claiming that the fronted wh-words in Korean are a heterogeneous set in that indefinite wh-words constitute focus movement, whereas the non-indefinite adjunct wh-word way ‘why’ is wh-movement. The heterogeneous nature of the fronted wh-words nicely deals with the contrast in superiority and wh-island effects along with the contrast in the cleft construction.

I claim that sentences with the sequence of v-e v under the purported serial verb construction reading are not serial verb constructions, crucially diverging from in Lee (1993) and Sohn (1999). I also claim that the sentences with the so called serial verb construction are complex sentences with the morpheme e serving as a subordinate conjunction. I also suggest that the auxiliary verb construction in Korean, which is mono-clausal in clausal architecture like other languages is a development from the complex sentence, which is quite in agreement with the cross-linguistic observation (Anderson 2006, among others).

I propose that the dative and locative case particles are not postpositions but morphological case markers, quite in contrast to the common view in the literature (Yang 1972, Cho and Sells 1995, and Suh 2013 among many others). I will show the difference between the nominative and the accusative and the dative and the locative in case drop, case stacking, and case spreading is attributed to the fact that the dative case and the locative case are inherent case, as compared with the nominative and the accusative, which are structural case par excellence. The present proposal has a nontrivial implication regarding the other case particles typically argued as postpositions in Korean.

I claim that the untensed clause with ko is not an instance of coordination, but an adjunct CP headed by ko, which is a complementizer. I show that coordination approach of any kind, either VP as in Yoon (1993, 1994, 1997) or TP as in Chung (2001) cannot give an adequate account for the data as presented in the paper. It is also shown that from the present proposal the (a)symmetry of tense and mood interpretation involving the untensed clause headed by ko naturally follows. If the present proposal is on the right track, it has a nontrivial theoretical implication of suggesting that symmetry in morphology is not a factor in syntactic coordination quite unlike syntactic categories.

It has been a common view in the literature since Yang (1984, 1988) that caki ‘self' is a long distance anaphor, subject to parameterizaton of the binding domain across languages. I suggest that caki ’self' is a local anaphor with a DP structure including pro. I also suggest that a null argument in Korean has a DP structure with pro, too, based on the wide range of similarities with caki ‘self.' The present proposal for caki ’self' and the null argument has a nontrivial theoretical implication for anaphors and null arguments in languages typologically akin to Korean.

It has been a standard view in the literature that a negative polarity item is an existential quantifier under the scope of its licensor (Ladusaw 1979, among many others). Given this, the strict locality and limited distribution of the Korean negative polarity item amwuto ‘anyone' has drawn much interest in Korean literature. I suggest that amwuto is a universal quantifier, scoping over the licensor, following Chung and Park (1998), and Choi (2011) and will show that this view can provide a more satisfactory account for its limited distribution and strict locality.