This study aims to investigate how L1 Chinese speakers of Korean acquire Korean embedded clauses with wh-expressions. Korean embedding verbs tutta ‘listen’ (Propositional-selecting predicate class) and kwungkumhata ‘wonder’ (Question-selecting predicate class) subcategorize for different types of complements which are defined by declarative complementizer ta or interrogative complementizer nunci. Tutta takes declarative or interrogative clauses and kwungkumhata can take only interrogatives. Experimental stimuli consisted of 12 embedding clauses by tutta (6 ta complementizer items and nunci complementizer items) and 12 embedding clauses by kwungkumhata(6 ta complementizer items and nunci complementizer items). Sixty three intermediate and advanced Chinese speakers of Korean(CK) participated in the study and 40 Korean native speakers(NK) participated as a control group. CK subjects were divided into 31 CK high group and 32 CK low group according to the participants’ Korean proficiency. The acceptability judgment among 3 groups were significantly different in the tutta-nunci condition and kwungkumhata-ta condition. The result showed that different learning principles were applied depending on the proficiency of learners. CK high group accepted the wh-embedding sentences in accordance with the semantic meaning of matrix verbs and type of wh-embedding clauses. However CK low group were not sensitive enough to discern the different linguistic context of wh-embedding sentences and rather accepted most of the given sentences.

In conversation analysis (CA), wh‐questions are treated as invoking a claim that questioners have no knowledge about the information being solicited. This paper examines a particular form of wh‐questions that indexes an epistemic claim incongruent with such a claim of no knowledge. In particular, it examines wh‐questions that are marked with a committal suffix in Korean conversation, in which the committal suffix indicates that the speaker should have the information at hand. Using the method of CA, this paper shows that these wh‐questions indexing incongruent knowledge claims are used in contexts in which questioners know or should know about the information being solicited. First, they are commonly used to seek a particular piece of information questioners already know about, or should already know about, by reference to prior talk or shared knowledge with recipients. Second, wh‐questions marked with committal endings can be used as word searches. In these cases, they do not seek the other partyʹs active participation in finding solutions to the missing word(s) and thus are self‐directed. The analysis will suggest that wh‐questions with committal endings can serve to avoid a potential trouble or accountability in interaction.

There has been considerable research which investigates whether the underlying linguistic competence of L2 learners is constrained by principles and parameters of UG, parallel to the situation in L1 acquisition. In terms of the Scope Principle (henceforth SP), a principle of UG, which is associated with the scope interaction between a quantified expression and a wh-phrase, some experimental studies in EFL settings were conducted to investigate whether or not interlanguage grammars can be characterized by the principle. These experiments were carried out through the Truth Value Judgment Task (henceforth TVJT) alone, showing contrasting and confusing results, especially between Japanese learners and Korean learners. That is, while Japanese EFL learners observed the SP, Korean EFL learners did not despite the fact that both Japanese L1 grammar and Korean L1 grammar disallow the distributive interpretation, especially in the ambiguous sentence like what does everyone have? Therefore, the present study aims to confirm whether the same results are obtained provided that the identical experiment using the TVJT is repeated in other EFL learners. Noticeably, this study employed an additional, complementary task (Question and Answer Task, QAT) in addition to the TVJT as an attempt to increase the accuracy of the task and reflect learners’ actual knowledge of the target features. In QAT, the subjects were asked to write the answers to the target questions involving quantifiers and wh-questions in English. Results from the TVJT appeared, on the face of it, to provide support for the claim that the Korean EFL learners are under control of the Scope Principle. However, findings from QAT revealed that they are not constrained by the principle. Thus, it would be reasonable to conclude that the results of the present experiment do not fully support the claim that the Korean EFL learners’ interlanguage grammar has access to the UG-driven Scope Principle. Instead, it can be argued that Korean learners' interlanguage grammar may be affected by their L1 grammar, which gives rise to the claim that the explicit instruction on the interpretation of those sentences is required as part of overcoming this problem.

Since Ross (1967), movement has been known to display what is called the island-sensitivity. As has long been advocated and assumed in the generative grammar, English DP and TP are the cyclic nodes/bounding nodes/barriers from which an extraction is disallowed, which turns into different versions of locality in the name of Phase Impenetrability Condition (PIC) in Chomsky (2000, 2001). With this technology, the bounding nodes enter into a new stage, Phases. In essence, however, Cyclicity, Subjacency, and PIC are all dealing with locality constraint on movement (Boecks 2012:58). While maintaining a theory-neutral stance between different versions of locality constraint on Wh-movement, the purpose of this paper is to highlight the two closely related constructions of English, Sentential Subject Construction (SSC) and its corresponding Extraposition Construction (EC) with respect to the island effect. The fact that Wh-constituent can be extracted neither from finite that-CP nor non-finite for-CP in SSC, while it freely moves out of both that-CP and for-CP in EC is analyzed with a null D head. As a consequence of this analysis, it is argued that a null D(P) is a necessary constituent in order to account for the impossibility of Wh-extraction from SSC. On the other hand, the ban on extraction is lifted in EC, due to the lack of the encapsulating DP.

The present study aims to investigate the effects of the intonations on the syntactic interpretation of the interrogatives with a wh-expression in the Daegu-North Gyeongsang Korean and the Seoul metropolitan Korean. To this end, it analyzes the syntactic and prosodic structures of the interrogatives with an embedded wh-clause or a yes/no-question with an indefinite pronoun. Two types of perception tests, one with unmodified intonations and the other with transplanted intonations, were carried out to analyze the respondents’ interpretations of the three types of the interrogatives. The results of the test with unmodified intonations were as follows. First, more than 90% of the respondents chose appropriate answers to the three types of the wh-interrogatives with no statistically significant differences. Second, the respondents’ reaction times demonstrated with statistically significant differences that the processing load of wh-questions with matrix scope was heavier than that of wh questions with narrow scope or yes-no questions with an indefinite pronoun. Third, embedding verbs of the question-selecting predicate class such as gunggeumhada ‘wonder’ led to longer reaction time than those of the proposition-selecting predicate class such as saenggakada ‘think’. In addition, the results of the perception test with transplanted prosodies revealed two decisive factors. First, the interrogative-endings -ka/na were more influential factors in the respondents’ syntactic interpretations of wh-questions than the other endings such as –ko/no or the prosodies were. Second, wh-questions with such embedding verbs as saenggakada ‘think’ were interpreted in close accordance with the transplanted prosodic structures, but not so much so in the case of wh-questions with such embedding verbs as gunggeumhada ‘wonder’ irrespective of the prosody transplants.

This study tries to provide an experimental explanation of a type of wh-question in North Gyeongsang Korean in which the so-called weak wh-island condition is violated. More specifically, this study concerns itself with the scope and prosody of wh-phrases in constructions with weak wh-island condition violation. The experiment carried out in this study is about the interaction between wh-scope and prosody at the syntax-phonology interface. It is shown in the paper that for wh-questions with weak wh-island violation to be produced and perceived grammatically, three conditions should be met: which include interpretation- matched prosody, D-linking, and forms of functional categories.

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.

Morphosyntactic and prosodic information is accessed by native speakers of North Gyeongsang Korean when interrogatives are interpreted. The present study investigates the interface between these structures. To do so, the study analyzes the syntactic and prosodic structures of the dialect’s yes/no and wh-questions, and then examines the rate of comprehension and acceptance of the two types of the interrogatives in a perception test. The prosodic structures in the test are modified by transplantation, the results of which allow us to find out the following. First, presented with the interrogatives whose syntactic and prosodic structures did not match, the native subjects of Gyeongsang Korean relied more on the prosodic structures than on the syntactic ones. Second, changes in prosodic structures had a strong influence on simple sentences, but relatively less so on complex sentences. These results lead to the conclusion that prosodic structures are the decisive factor in syntactic interpretations, and, accordingly, are intricately intertwined with the syntactic structures during the processing of interrogatives.

This paper investigates the syntax of multiple wh’s in Korean, especially when such multiple wh’s are of reduplicative form. Particularly focusing on locality in deriving a pair-list interpretation in the construction at issue, we argue that the clause-boundedness restriction follows from quantifier raising (QR) and absorption that multiple wh’s undergo. At the same time, we examine how Dayal’s (1996) wh-triangle and Watanabe’s (1992) additional wh effects materialize in Korean multiple wh-constructions, providing a comparativesyntactic account for the issues at hand. Meantime, we also investigate the issue of how Pesetsky’s (1987) D-linking comes into play in the construction in question.

Hyeree Kim. 2017. Syntactic Variation of Wh-Clefts and the Complexity Principle: A Corpus Study. Studies in Modern Grammar 95, 37-54. This study examines variable usage between to-infinitives and bare-infinitives in wh-cleft sentences in English. There are a number of previous studies dealing with either formal and functional analyses or regional and stylistic variation of wh-clefts. This study, however, attempts to find underlying factors determining the distribution of the two alternatives and investigates whether the so-called ‘complexity principle’ proposed by Rohdenburg (1998, 2000) is valid. Mair and Winkle (2012) used ten ICE corpora as an attempt to verify two out of four hypotheses of Rohdenburg’s principle. Although their findings partially supported Rohdenburg’s claims, the paucity of data turned out to neither prove nor disprove them. This study uses a much larger corpus, the COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English), and shows that all four hypotheses of the complexity principle are valid: that is, the to-infinitive is more likely to occur, (i) if do is in more complex forms (did, done, doing) rather than in the simple present forms (do, does), (ii) if some elements intervene between do and be, (iii) if be is in the past tense (was) rather than in the simple present tense (is), or (iv) if be occurs in complex forms (e.g. will be, would be) rather than in the simple present or past forms (is, was). Furthermore, this study proposes and justifies a new hypothesis for the complexity principle: that is, the to-infinitive is more likely to occur, (v) if the intervening material between what and do are more complex (or lengthy).

The purpose of this study is to investigate the early wh-movement acquisition of English native speakers from the perspective of Minimalist Program. Guasti and Rizzi(1996) propose the null auxiliary hypothesis that the structure of the questions where the verb is inflected with -ing includes a null auxiliary, the counterpart of the lexical be. They draw a parallel between the null auxiliary and the early null subject. Rizzi(1997) proposes that the CP system, like the IP system, is layered. ForceP is the highest project which determines the clausal type and FocusP's specifier is the landing site for wh-operators and whose head hosts inverted auxiliaries. Guasti and Rizzi(1996) argue that children's auxless questions are structures truncated below ForceP. Thus, the null auxiliary, like other early phenomena, finds its source in the mechanism of clausal truncation. The phenomena of early language acquisition reflects the process of acquiring functional categories as children grow.

This paper provides the specific procedure of the label projection in the C space for wh-movement under the split CP hypothesis (Rizzi 1997). I argue that wh-phrases have the features [Q, wh] by means of the N-to-D head raising, which makes wh-items, simple or complex, be labeled as phrasal DPs. This means that the reprojection of the CP to the DP by the wh-head cannot occur along the lines of Donati (2006). Under the assumption that the complementizer only has the E(dge)F(eature), the English C acquires the Q-feature by means of Internal Merge of a wh-phrase bearing the [Q, wh] to [Spec,C]. The Q-feature is not base-generated on the C, whose Q is inherited from the wh-phrase occupying [Spec,C]. The transmission of the Q-feature to the C plays a part in making the C reprojected to the FocusP(or QP) during the derivation.

This paper suggests that wh-arguments such as ``who`` and ``what`` are DP-arguments, whereas a wh-adjunct ``why`` is an NP-adverbial (introduced by a null preposition). Under this proposal, it will be claimed that wh-arguments can check the u[Wh] within the DP without movement due to the presence of the head D bearing the [Q], whereas a wh-adjunct ``why`` must move to check its u[Wh] due to lack of the D. This claim will be illustrated by the asymmetry arising between wh-arguments and wh-adjunct ``why`` in the Islands in Korean/Japanese, supporting that the Phase Impenetrability Condition constrains covert wh-movement as well as overt wh-movement.