A study of the distribution and the nature of the so-called Multiple Subject Construction (MSC) in Korean is presented from the perspective of functional syntax theory. The major proposal is that multiple subjectivization is possible only when the first noun phrase of the multiple subjects is characterized by the rest of the clause. The…

A study of the noun incorporation phenomenon in Korean suggests that noun incorporation occurs at D-structure and obeys the Head Movement Constraint syntactically, and the Theme-Only Constraint semantically. First, the structure of "sunrise"-type words is identified, showing that before derivation through nominalization of the affix "-i,"…

The distributional and interpretive properties of the reciprocal "selo" in Korean are analyzed and compared with reciprocals in other languages, particularly Japanese and English. It is proposed that if it can be assumed that there are two homophonous "selos" in Korean, four of the five idiosyncratic properties of…

An analysis of long-distance anaphora, a binding phenomenon in which reflexives find their antecedents outside their local domain, is presented, using data from English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Icelandic, and Italian. It is found that no approach deals with long-distance anaphors exclusively and elegantly. The binding domain…

A study compared functional similarities and differences in the passive in English and Korean, examining several pragmatics theories (given/new information, theme-rheme structure, foregrounding/backgrounding, defocusing, role prominence, emotional function) for their explanations of the functions of the passives. It is concluded that there is a…

The grammatical phenomenon in Japanese known as Ga-No conversion is examined. In this phenomenon, the nominative particle "ga" can be converted to genitive particle "no" in embedded sentences with a nominal head such as a relative clause or complementary clause. A pragmatic constraint to this conversion that has not previously been explored is…

Analysis of the Korean verb "na-ka-ta" ("to get out, exit") focuses on why an expression such as "kyengkicang-ey na-ka-ta" ("someone goes out/in to the sports arena") is acceptable only in the context that the person's entering the arena is for the purpose of a contest, while it becomes semantically…