The present study investigates Korean university EFL students’ use of conjunctive adverbials (CAs) in argumentative writing. The data for the study consist of a Korean university students’ writing corpus that is divided into three different subcorpora based on proficiency levels, and a reference corpus of American students’ writings. The results show that the nonnative writers in all three groups greatly overused CAs. Examination of their overuse patterns according to different taxonomic types indicated that sequential and additive types were mostly overused, as much as six times more than those by the native writers. In addition, several characteristics of the nonnative writers’ CA usage are discussed, including their heavy dependence on sentence-initial positioning, and both form-related and usage-related misuses of CAs, especially among the lowest-level learners. The study concludes with some pedagogical implications and suggestions.

The question of how and where adverbs are licensed has relatively been discussed less vigorously. It will be argued here that though the hierarchy suggested in Cinque(1999) reflects the cross-linguistic order of functional heads, it leaves room for a revision for the so-called sentential adverbs and the adverbs modifying NP/DP found in English and Korean. Based on the observations in Bogal-Allbritten(2014) and Lee(2008), the licensing relationship between the syntactic heads and adverbs suggested in Potsdam(1998) will be revised. Also, the hierarchy for adverbs suggested in 박(2000) will be slightly revised for the adverbs modifying NP/DP found in English and Korean.