This paper investigates how an intermediate Korean learner of English uses overt and null pronouns in writing short essays and also whether topic-prominent properties of the first language transfer to and affect the interlanguage. The results of this case study show that this learner was able to provide overt subjects and objects with relative ease, which is consistent with the previous study by Hwang (2005), but that he is somehow still under the influence of the L1 topic-prominent features. The unlearning of topic-prominence seems to be a lengthy process, during which L2 learners utilize some strategies based on surface form in order to avoid producing ungrammatical sentences.

We claim in this paper that null arguments are a pronoun linked to a topic in their minimal CP domain. This claim is basically a unification of the following three existing proposals accounting for null argument phenomena: flexible null topic analysis that null arguments are bound by a flexible topic, pro analysis that they are a pronoun, and a proposal that pronouns are linked to CP edge. We show that this unified analysis nicely deals with distribution and interpretation of null arguments in Korean.

Lee, Soo-Jae. 1999. Interpreting and Processing Null Arguments in Korean Relative Clauses. Studies in Modern Grammar 15, 55-78. In interpreting and processing relative clauses in many languages the issue has been which element is relativised, a subject or an object. For instance, experimental evidence shows that it is easier to process the relative clause in which a subject is relativised rather than an object. In processing Korean relative clauses with two null arguments the issue is how to resolve the ambiguity of the two logically possible interpretations: either null subjects are coreferential with matrix subjects and null objects are relativised or null objects are coreferential with matrix subjects and null subjects are relativised. By providing various cues I will demonstrate that Huang`s claim that null objects cannot be coreferential with matrix subjects cannot be supported in Korean. In Korean (though not in Chinese) null objects in relative clauses are very flexible in interpretation.