On the licensing condition of Null Argument in the Minimalist Program

강남길 충북대학교 인문과학연구소 1994 人文學誌 Vol.11 No.1

Pronouns, Reflexives, and Sloppy Identity

강남길 한국중앙영어영문학회 2009 영어영문학연구 Vol.51 No.3

The goal of this paper is to capture the behavior of pronouns and reflexives based on sloppy identity. One major point of surface anaphora in Korean is that Korean pronouns, unlike English pronouns, cannot give rise to the strict/sloppy ambiguity. An interesting property of the Korean overt pronoun ku ‘he’ is that it can never induce the sloppy reading, due to the same restriction prohibiting a bound variable interpretation, unlike English pronouns. This, in turn, suggests that the Korean overt pronoun kunye ‘she’ cannot also exhibit the sloppy reading, unlike English pronouns. This asymmetry between English and Korean may be accounted for by assuming that the quantificational force applies to English with regard to sloppy identity, while it cannot apply to Korean. Another central idea of this paper is that Korean reflexives share common properties with English reflexives with regard to the obligation of the sloppy reading, but ku-casin ‘he-self’ may constitute further support for its pronominal status. That is, it may give rise to the strict/sloppy ambiguity under VP ellipsis, regardless of local binding and non-local binding. It is worth mentioning that deep anaphora in Korean admits the strict/sloppy ambiguity. A demonstrative may in general be understood as a context of copying or as a context of anaphora. Under copying, sentences which include a demonstrative behave like the comparable VP-deletion structure, regardless of locality, whereas under a context of anaphora, deep anaphora gives rise to the strict reading without a linguistic antecedent. The goal of this paper is to capture the behavior of pronouns and reflexives based on sloppy identity. One major point of surface anaphora in Korean is that Korean pronouns, unlike English pronouns, cannot give rise to the strict/sloppy ambiguity. An interesting property of the Korean overt pronoun ku ‘he’ is that it can never induce the sloppy reading, due to the same restriction prohibiting a bound variable interpretation, unlike English pronouns. This, in turn, suggests that the Korean overt pronoun kunye ‘she’ cannot also exhibit the sloppy reading, unlike English pronouns. This asymmetry between English and Korean may be accounted for by assuming that the quantificational force applies to English with regard to sloppy identity, while it cannot apply to Korean. Another central idea of this paper is that Korean reflexives share common properties with English reflexives with regard to the obligation of the sloppy reading, but ku-casin ‘he-self’ may constitute further support for its pronominal status. That is, it may give rise to the strict/sloppy ambiguity under VP ellipsis, regardless of local binding and non-local binding. It is worth mentioning that deep anaphora in Korean admits the strict/sloppy ambiguity. A demonstrative may in general be understood as a context of copying or as a context of anaphora. Under copying, sentences which include a demonstrative behave like the comparable VP-deletion structure, regardless of locality, whereas under a context of anaphora, deep anaphora gives rise to the strict reading without a linguistic antecedent.

Coindexation-Based Binding Theory and Linking Theory

강남길 대한영어영문학회 2006 영어영문학연구 Vol.32 No.2

Kang, Nam-kil. “Coindexation-Based Binding Theory and Linking Theory.” Studies on English Language and Literature. 32.2(2006): 187-205. In this paper, our discussion is based on the evaluation of the coindexation-based binding theory and Linking Theory. In Linking Theory, binding relations are meant to be captured through linking. Linking is partly similar to and partly different from coindexing. In this paper, we demonstrate that such differences between linking and coindexing are empirical rather than notational. We also provide several semantic and syntactic evidence for Linking Theory. Those cases are really empirical and hence prove important arguments in favor of Linking Theory. As further evidence for Linking Theory, we consider the possibility of dispensing with reconstruction in BVA. There are some tenable reasons to argue for it. (Far East University)

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.

Sloppy Identity, VP Ellipsis, and Null Anaphora

강남길 한국중앙영어영문학회 2007 영어영문학연구 Vol.49 No.3

One of the central doctrines of VP ellipsis and null anaphora is that they relate sloppy identity. The way they are hypothesized to do so is by postulating ambiguity of interpretation in the complete clause, or by treating null objects as a kind of VP ellipsis. What we have been arguing here is focussed on such semantic questions. However, it should be pointed out that there are problems at the very heart of the two analyses we have dealt with here. Attractive though the two analyses might be, they are empirically incorrect. Several problems are worth mentioning regarding them. First, the lambda abstraction-based approaches should always postulate ambiguity of interpretation in the complete clause that serves as a source for the elliptical clause. To put it differently, they require hidden ambiguity and the derivation of their rules is too procedural. Second, as stated in the course of our discussion, the lambda abstraction-based approaches and the equation-solving approach cannot account for the existence of the mixed reading under VP ellipsis. Third, the parallelism between the availability of the sloppy reading and that of a bound variable interpretation for a pronoun is not consistent. The sloppy reading can in fact arise independently of bound variable anaphora. Fourth, the NOC in Korean does not necessarily yield sloppy readings in the contexts where English VP ellipsis does. A further problem is that the NOC in Korean seems to require a different treatment. The results observed in this paper suggest that the NOC in Korean cannot be treated as analogous to VP ellipsis in English. Apart from theoretical considerations, there are empirical problems with the analysis treating the NOC in Korean as analogous to VP ellipsis in English.

A Big Data Analysis of A Hot Political Issue

강남길 한국중원언어학회 2024 언어학연구 Vol.- No.70

The ultimate goal of this paper is to analyze 22 newspaper articles written in December, 2023 regarding Justice Minister Han. This research was carried out by python. A point to note is that the word minister was the most widely used, followed by the word representative, the word politics, the name Han, Dong-hoon, and the word general election, in descending order. When it comes to the network analysis of the relevant data, the ministry of justice and the Minjoo party of Korea are deemed to be core words in 22 newspaper articles. Finally, we classified the relevant words such as nouns and verbs into the positive one or the negative one. We assigned +1 to the positive one, whereas we assigned –1 to the negative one. By doing so, we could produce reasonable results with respect to Justice Minister Han. Most importantly, we obtained 14 positive words, whereas we obtained 6 negative words. It is clear from our findings that the majority of newspapers think highly of Justice Minister Han.

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.

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.

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.

Referential Opacity in Propositional Attitudes

강남길 한국중앙영어영문학회 2013 영어영문학연구 Vol.55 No.3

This paper has attempted to show how referential opacity is licensed within the system of the mental spaces approach. Our analysis is motivated by the fact that we can capture referential opacity in Korean in terms of mental spaces and links between them within the mental spaces approach. One major point of propositional attitudes in Korean is that the embedded subject position with past tense induces only a de re reading, despite the well-known generalization that propositional attitudes are referentially opaque. We take this fact as support for the assumption that subject positions in the complement of propositional attitude verbs in Korean are transparent. Most importantly, we have discussed the cases of referential opacity in Korean propositional attitude sentences and proposed that they fall within the system of the mental spaces approach. No special devices are needed to account for referential opacity in Korean propositional attitude sentences. An interesting point with regard to a de re reading within the system of the mental spaces approach is that there is a referential link between the reality space (R) and the belief space (B). With respect to a de dicto reading, on the other hand, it is important to note that there is no referential link between the reality space (R) and the belief space (B). Finally, we have proposed in this paper that in Korean propositional attitude sentences pronouns induce interpretations that are looser than reflexives and pro yields interpretations that are looser than pronouns.