Crossover and Reconstruction

강남길 한국중앙영어영문학회 2014 영어영문학연구 Vol.56 No.1

The main goal of this paper is to show how Korean crossover cases with scrambling are accounted for without recourse to reconstruction. To achieve this goal, the properties of crossover in Korean are investigated within the conception of connectivity and an agreement-based approach without assuming the reconstruction hypothesis. One major point of Korean crossover cases is that they are instances of connectivity and they fall within our reference agreement principles. With respect to connectivity and agreement, it is important to note that ku ‘he’ can display connectivity with A-type QPs, whereas ku-tul ‘they’ can display connectivity with B-type QPs. That is, if a QP is an A-type QP, ku ‘he’ can display connectivity since its referent consists of a single entity. However, if a QP is a B-type QP, ku-tul ‘they’ can display connectivity since its referent consists of more than a single entity. On the other hand, Korean reflexives, regardless of the types of QPs, can display connectivity with A-type QPs or B-type QPs since their referents can consist of both a single entity and more than a single entity. Additionally, this paper provides some empirical evidence which does not entertain the reconstruction hypothesis that a dependent term after reconstruction must be c-commanded by the QR trace of a QP.

The Reason why Ku 'he' cannot be A'-dependent: An Agree-based Approach

강남길 대한영어영문학회 2013 영어영문학연구 Vol.39 No.3

The ultimate goal of this paper is to provide an agree-based analysis of why the Korean singular pronoun ku 'he' is not interpreted as a variable bound by every-type quantifiers. This paper has attempted to show how the anti-variable binding of the so-called overt pronoun ku 'he' is accounted for within the conception of the agree-based approach without recourse to Binding Condition B. The fact that the Korean singular pronoun ku 'he' is not licensed by every-type quantifiers need not to be stipulated. It simply follows from the fact that if the overt pronoun ku 'he' which is singular does not agree in number with its antecedent, it cannot get its reference (R-feature) from its antecedent. With respect to the treatment of binding within the agree-based approach, one major point that is worth emphasizing is that the anti-variable binding of ku 'he' falls on our Reference Agreement Principle based on agree which requires the singular pronoun ku 'he' to be linked to its singular antecedent. More specifically, it is hypothesized in this paper that ku 'he' cannot be interpreted as a bound variable due to the number disagreement between every-type quantifiers and the singular dependent term ku 'he'. This hypothesis rests on the assumption that since every-type quantifiers in Korean involve a group of people, it is semantically plural, but ku 'he' is a singular NP whose referent must consist of a single entity. Finally, this paper provides several pieces of empirical evidence which entertains the hypothesis that the overt pronoun ku 'he' which is singular must agree in number with its antecedent.

Three Types of Anaphors and their Binding Behavior

강남길 미래영어영문학회 2011 영어영문학 Vol.16 No.1

본 논문의 목표는 세 유형의 대용어에서 나타나는 결속 행태를 고찰하는 것이다. 이를 위해 Richards (1995, 1997) 의 N-자질에 의하여 대용어를 A유형, B유형, C유형으로 분류하여 살펴보고 Richards (1997) 가 지닌 기술적인 문제점을 지적한다. 즉 한국어 재귀사 자기, 그자신, 자기자신은 Richards (1997) 의 N-자질에 의한 국부성과 비국부성의 이론에 부합되지 못한다. 이는 Richards (1997) 의 경합 이론이 사실상 보편적인 결속현상을 적절히 포착하지 못 한다는 것을 의미한다. 또한 본 논문은 여러 언어에서 나타나는 재귀사가 어떤 형태의 결속을 하는지를 고찰하였다. 따라서 본 논문은 Higginbotham (1992) 이 선도적으로 제시한 ‘대용지시’와 ‘공동지시’ 를 채택하여 수정하고 ‘지시의 상속’과 ‘의도된 공지시’ 라는 새로운 개념을 도입하여 여러 언어의 재귀사를 설명하였다. 우선 한국어의 자기와 일본어의 zibun은 화자의 의도가 필요한 ‘의도된 공지시’ 를 통하여 선행사와 결속되는 반면 영어의 himself, 한국어의 자기자신, 그자신, 일본어의 zibun-zisin, kare-zisin과 같은 재귀사는 화자의 의도가 요구되지 않고 선행사로부터 지시를 상속받아 결속된다. 그러므로 한국어의 복합 재귀사와 일본어의 복합 재귀사는 그들의 결속에 있어서 한국어의 자기와 일본어의 zibun 과 다른 결속행태를 보인다.

The Analysis of the Frequencies of Reflexives: A Corpus-Based Account

강남길 한국중앙영어영문학회 2012 영어영문학연구 Vol.54 No.3

Our purpose here has been to address the use and frequencies of universally attested local anaphors and long-distance anaphors within the corpus approach. First, both Seycong corpus and novel corpus clearly illustrate the fact that the Korean reflexive casin ‘self’ can be used more frequently and that it is one of the primary exponents of Korean reflexives with caki ‘self’. We have argued in this paper that this finding, of course, accords well with our claim that casin ‘self’ appears anywhere other reflexives appear, but other reflexives are barred from certain positions where casin ‘self’ can appear. There might be plenty of reasons why the Korean reflexive casin ‘self’ is the most preferred reflexive among Korean reflexives. The biggest reason of all may be because it admits both local binding and non-local binding. In addition, the phi-features of casin ‘self’ are defective in that they are not specified. Thus, casin ‘self’ can get its reference from the first person, the second person, and the third person. Second, we have observed earlier that possessive case-marked reflexives in Korean are preferable to other case-marked reflexives and that a reflexive is most likely to be bound by an NP in a sentence if that reflexive can be interpreted as a possessive cased-marked reflexive. Although it is not clear how this can be accounted for, there may be much relevance between reflexives and their case markers. Third, we have pointed out that the overall frequency of caki-casin ‘self-self’ is lower than that of caki ‘self’. We assume that this result is expected, given the assumption that only caki ‘self’ among Korean reflexives can refer to the hearer as its referent. That is, this can be reduced to the availability of the hearer’s accessibility to caki ‘self’. Finally, we have demonstrated that Condition A in Korean does not constrain the distribution of anaphors which are supposed to be local and that anaphors in Korean freely overlap in local domain or non-local domain. Consequently, our corpus analysis does not argue for the hypothesis that reflexives and pronouns must be in complementary distribution.

Logophors and Discourse Participants

강남길 한국중앙영어영문학회 2010 영어영문학연구 Vol.52 No.3

The purpose of this paper is to argue that the nature of the Korean logophoric reflexives caki-casin and ku-casin is distinct from that of the English logophoric reflexives myself, and yourself and the Korean logophoric reflexive caki. Presumably when an NP occurs as the antecedent of caki, the logophoric reflexive caki can refer to the hearer in the discourse equally as well as to a linguistic antecedent. This result in Korean is predicted, given the hypothesis that caki is either non-referential or referential. Ku-casin and caki-casin in the same context, on the other hand, cannot refer to the hearer and uniquely refer to a linguistic antecedent since they are non-referential NPs. When a plural NP occurs as the antecedent of caki, the availability of the hearer as the referent of caki provides confirmation that caki is referential. However, caki-casin and ku-casin refer to an entity such as a linguistic antecedent other than the speaker or the hearer since they are inherently non-referential. As in the case of a conjunct NP, when a QP occurs as the antecedent, we obtain the same result. This result seems to crucially show that when a QP occurs as the antecedent, caki is referential so that it can be interpreted as related to the hearer. First person reflexives and second person reflexives in English can occur without an antecedent in blatant violation of condition A. The Korean logophoric reflexive caki behaves in the same way as English SELF anaphors since it gets its meaning by referring to a discourse element such as the hearer. However, the Korean logophoric reflexives ku-casin and caki-casin are used in Korean for referring to an entity such as a linguistic antecedent other than the speaker or the hearer even when they occur without their antecedents.

Implicit Arguments

강남길 미래영어영문학회 2013 영어영문학 Vol.18 No.1

본 논문은 암시적 논항이 어떻게 통사 상에 나타나고 어떻게 회복되는가에 초점을 맞춘다. 제2절에서 필자는 암시적 논항의 특징이 무엇인지, 어떤 형태의 암시적 논항에 의해 PRO가 통제 되는지를 설명하고 암시적 논항은 통제와 상호작용하는 문법적으로 정의될 수 있는 실체들이라고 규정한다. 제 3절은 Brody & Manzini (1987) 와 Landau (2010) 의 두 선행연구에 초점을 맞춘다. 전자의 접근법은 여격과 행위자역은 PRO의 통제자로 나타나지만 암시적 목적격은 PRO의 통제자로 나타날 수 없다고 보고 투사원리를 수정한다. 그리고 전자의 접근법은 암시적 논항이 PRO의 통제자로 역할을 하기 때문에 그것은 통사 상에서 허용되는 존재라 주장한다. 반면 후자의 접근법은 암시적 논항에 의한 부분적인 통제를 의무적 통제의 일부로 간주하고 암시적 논항에 의한 통제는 통사적으로 표시되어야 한다고 주장한다. 3절에서 밝혀지듯 한국어 데이터는 후자의 접근법을 지지한다. 제 3절에서 필자는 한국어의 암시적 논항은 통사적으로 표시되어야한다는 증거를 제시하고 암시적 논항은 명시적 논항과 다른 의미를 지니고 있어서 전자는 후자로 부터 끌어낼 수 없는 공 논항 이라고 주장한다. 또한 필자는 명시적 논항과 암시적 논항의 존재를 설명하기 위하여 격 양도는 수의적 이어야하며 의미역은 격 표시된 요소에 할당 되지 않고 격 표시된 위치에 할당되어야 한다고 제안한다. 마지막으로 필자는 한국어의 암시적 논항이 지니고 있는 의미역은 PRO가 나타나는 비시제절의 술부의 의미에 의해 회복된다고 제안한다.

Quirky Binding in the Object-Subject Construction and its Semantics

강남길 한국중앙영어영문학회 2008 영어영문학연구 Vol.50 No.1

It has been argued in this paper that Korean reflexives and pronouns reveal murky cases where dependent terms c-command QPs at PF and that syntactic coindexations cannot not distinguish between a BVA reading and a group reading. Here a BVA reading and a group reading induced by Korean plural dependent terms are attributed to a property of the Korean plural morpheme tul and the dual readings induced by the plural dependent terms are accounted for by adopting linking at LF. That is to say, the dual readings can be disambiguated by adopting linking after QR, depending on whether the dependent terms are linked to the trace of QR or the operator itself at LF. To account for the semantic difference between singular terms and plural terms, all we need to assume here is that the interpretative difference between singular terms and plural terms results from the Korean bound morpheme tul. Put in a different way, the Korean plural morpheme tul functions as a dependent term which induces a group reading and a BVA reading, whereas singular reflexives function as a distributor which induces a BVA reading. This semantic difference between singularity and plurality in Korean leads us to conclude that in Korean, a structurally singular NP functions as semantically singular, whereas a structurally plural NP functions either as semantically singular or plural. As a result, the Korean plural dependent terms reveal dualistic number properties: structurally they function only as plural, and semantically either as singular or plural.

Binding and Three Types of Diagnoses

강남길 미래영어영문학회 2012 영어영문학 Vol.17 No.1

본 논문의 목표는 결속과 공지시의 차이점을 밝힐 수 있는 세 유형의 진단방법을 도입하고 그들을 평가하는 것이다. 본 논문에서 필자는 슬러피 해석의 본질은 결속변항대용어의 본질과 다르다고 주장한다. 이런 사실은 결속과 공지시를 진단하는 세 가지 진단방법의 결과가 서로 일치하지 않는다는 점에서 찾을 수 있다. 첫째, Even 진단법은 한국어의 그자신과 자기는 공지시나 결속에 의하여 선행사에 결부되는 것으로 진단하며 반면에 자기자신은 오로지 결속에 의하여 선행사에 관계하는 것으로 진단한다. 둘째, 양화사/의문선행사 진단법은 국부결속을 하는 자기는 공지시를 비국부 결속을 하는 자기는 결속을 각각 허용하는 것으로 진단하며 자기자신과 그자신은 결속에 의하여 선행사에 연결되는 것으로 진단한다. 셋째, 슬러피 진단법은 자기자신, 그자신, 자기가 모두 슬퍼피 해석만을 보이므로 그들 모두 결속에 의하여 선행사에 관계하는 것으로 진단한다. 따라서 본 논문에서 필자는 슬러피 진단법이 Even 진단법과 양화사/의문선행사 진단법이 포착하는 현상을 설명하지 못함을 밝히고 필자는 공지시나 결속에서 슬러피 진단법을 배제하고 Even 진단법과 양화사/의문선행사 진단법을 혼용하는 혼합진단법을 제안한다. 마지막으로 필자는 대용어라 불리 우는 요소들 간에 선택이 주어지면 그들은 경쟁하고 결국 결속이 공지시보다 선호된다고 주장한다. 따라서 결속이 주어진 한 명제를 위해 사용될 때마다 공지시는 사용되지 않는다.

Bound Anaphora and Empirical Problems

강남길 한국중앙영어영문학회 2005 영어영문학연구 Vol.47 No.1

In this paper, we have examined the binding behavior of two types of anaphoric forms. We have argued that the plural anaphoric forms and pro readily admit a bound variable interpretation, whereas singular anaphoric forms rarely do it. This phenomenon is mostly observed in some languages. The results observed in this paper confirm that there are specialized anaphoric forms corresponding to quantifiers. However, the real picture of the interpretive distinction between singular forms and plural forms is not that simple in light of English. Furthermore, our observation is only limited to some languages. Another observation made in this paper is the problem of complementary distribution, one of the empirical problems raised in the binding theory. We demonstrate that when anaphors and pronominals are not in complementary distribution, they are not identically interpreted. We have argued that it is justified by the requirement of the Semantic Competition Principle. However even so, we know nothing about what the syntactic condition of that phenomenon is. We will leave it for further research.

Null Arguments

강남길 한국중앙영어영문학회 2011 영어영문학연구 Vol.53 No.3

One of the most well-known features of linguistic theory is that there exist various empty categories at various levels of mental representation. Languages such as Korean and Japanese are well-known for the fact that they allow arguments of a predicate to be freely dropped. Such null arguments have been a challenge to linguistic theory in that their contents are not recovered from the verbal agreement system. Simply put, null arguments occur in languages such as Korean, Mandarin, and Japanese, which has no agreement system whatsoever. If so, why should we allow the existence of pro? What types of empty categories appear in Korean? In order to give a plausible answer to these queries, we discuss the issue of assuming ECs such as PRO and pro. The present study assumes that both PRO and pro are allowed in Korean and that PRO appears as the subject of both tensed and untensed clauses, and pro as an empty pronominal in subject and object positions. Previous approaches assume that overt plural pronouns in Korean have a definite reading, whereas pro does not. Unfortunately, the picture turns out to be even more complicated. We have demonstrated in this paper that Korean pro can be more broadly used than the Korean overt pronoun ku in that pro can bear definite as well as indefinite interpretations, while overt pronouns have only definite interpretations. Finally, we have proposed that pro can function as a free variable depending on the speaker’s intention since the referent of pro is always influenced by the discriminating use of a demonstrative by the speaker. We have shown that this fact results from extending the spirit of Higginbotham’s (1992) analysis to pro.