This paper investigates whether there is a correlation between the development of agreement and the unlearning of null subjects and also how the null subjects of Korean EFL learners’ interlanguage are represented in topic-bound positions. The results of this study show that the unlearning of null subjects does not necessarily help the development of the third person singular morpheme like previously put forth by pro-drop analysis, which disconfirms the long-lived belief, MUH (Morphological Uniformity Hypothesis). On the contrary, the results also show that the positions of null arguments actually conform to the positions of topic-bound positions, which leads to the suggestion of the topic-drop analysis of null subjects.

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.

The goal of this paper is to suggest a feature-based analysis for the licensing of null subjects found in languages. After reviewing the uniformity principle suggested in 1980s, we investigate the possibility of more insightful description on the distribution of null subjects based on Holmberg and Roberts (2013)'s research. Then we show that the typological classification of the null subject constructions among languages helps to provide a universal rule that applies to explain the full, partial and radical pro-drop phenomena among languages. Finally we suggest a feature copying or feature sharing analysis for null topic and null subject constructions in Korean.