Han Jung Lee

This paper examines the (a)symmetries in the realization of focused subjects and objects in Korean. Through rating experiments, we demonstrate that native speakers' judgments of acceptability of sentences containing case-marked or case-ellipsed subjects and objects are sensitive to the contrastiveness strength and the discourse accessibility of focused arguments. However, our experiments also show that focused subjects exhibit stronger preference for explicit case marking over case ellipsis and

The naturalness with which case ellipsis occurs in certain environments in Korean has been attributed to the information status and markedness of arguments, although few studies have compared the two factors explicitly. Through experimentation, the present study demonstrates that both factors simultaneously and independently influence object case ellipsis. The present study also provides a possible explanation of why case-marked and caseellipsed objects are distributed the way they are by going

Language and Information 12.2 , 1-20. This paper examines the effects of focus types on case ellipsis in Korean. A number of previous studies have suggested that accusative case markers in Korean and Japanese cannot be dropped when the object they mark is contrastively focused (Masunaga, 1988;Yatabe, 1999; Ko, 2000; Lee, 2002). Using experimental evidence, we argue against the view that case ellipsis in Korean is sensitive to the distinction between contrastive vs. non-contrastive focus. An alte

Acceptability of case ellipsis on focused subject NPs of differing argument roles exhibits clear asymmetry which so far has not received a plausible explanation. This study explores the gradient acceptability of case ellipsis on the focused subject NPs of three subtypes of one-place predicates in Korean. Through a rating experiment which tested the acceptability of case marking and case ellipsis for the subject of unergative verbs and two types of unaccusative verbs that are contrastively focuse

It is well-known that hierarchies of person, animacy and definiteness have effects on case marking systems in various languages, where certain classes of subjects and objects are marked, but not others. This paper presents evidence of frequency effects of those hierarchies on case ellipsis in Korean. The two major aims of this paper are the following. First of all, the significance of variable case ellipsis patterns of Korean, as found in the CallFriend Korean corpus (LDC 1996), will be demonstr

This paper examines the effects of d-linking on the acceptability of case ellipsis for wh-subjects. Previous syntactic accounts of case ellipsis have suggested that the interpretation of case-ellipsed wh-subjects is more restricted compared to that of case-ellipsed wh-objects appearing in their canonical position in that these subjects are left-dislocated phrases that have only a d(iscourse)-linked interpretation (Ahn and Cho 2006a, 2006b, 2007, 2009). Using experimental evidence, we argue again

Case ellipsis for subjects and objects in Korean exhibits several clear asymmetries in acceptability. The main purpose of this study is to provide a new probability-based analysis of a subject-object asymmetry in case ellipsis found in OSV sentences that can also explain other types of subject-object asymmetries in a unified way. In previous syntactic accounts of case ellipsis, unacceptable case ellipsis for subjects in OSV sentences has been analyzed as resulting from a violation of a structura

Lee, Hanjung. 2015. Information structure, topic predictability and gradients in Korean case ellipsis: A probabilistic account. Linguistic Research 32(3), 749-771. This paper examines previous characterizations of the phenomenon of case ellipsis in Korean in terms of the information status of argument NPs and provides empirical evidence for a probability-based account. Previous information structural accounts of case ellipsis tended to place exclusive importance on information structure and make

Acceptability of case ellipsis on focused subjects and objects exhibits clear asymmetry which so far has not received a plausible explanation. Case ellipsis on focused direct objects occurs naturally, whereas case ellipsis on focused transitive subjects is unnatural whether the subject is contrastively focused or not. The main purpose of this paper is to provide experimental evidence that the degree of acceptability of case ellipsis on focused argument NPs in Korean is sensitive to the usage pro

This article examines the variation displayed by believe-type verbs between the complement clause involving Raising-to-object (RtO) and the complement clause without raising in Korean. Through a corpus study on the distribution of the complement clauses of the verb sayngkakha- 'think', we demonstrate that the choice between the two types of complement clauses is strongly affected by the contrastiveness of the proposition expressed by those clauses. Going one step further, we also provide a possi

This study investigates Korean EFL learners’ awareness and use of the English existential there-construction by examining data collected from 54 Korean EFL learners of English by means of a pragmalinguistic judgment task and a controlled discourse completion task. The results of the judgment task reveal that lower proficiency learners rated canonical sentences and existentials with a preposed locative best in the communicative situations where the use of existentials would have been most appropr

It has been observed that only a small subset of dative verbs that can express causation of possession such as cwu- ‘give’, ceykongha- ‘offer’ and cikupha- ‘pay’may be found in the double accusative construction in Korean. This paper presents a semantic account of Korean dative verbs and constructions that can correctly predict the distribution of semantic classes of dative verbs in the DAT-ACC and double accusative constructions. I argue that a satisfactory analysis of this distribution require

It has been observed that a subset of dative verbs that express caused possession such as cwu- ‘give’, ceykongha- ‘offer’ and swuyeha- ‘award’ allow both dative and accusative case on their recipient arguments. These verbs contrast with caused motion verbs such as verbs of sending and throwing, which allow their recipient argument to be realized only with dative case or other oblique postpositions. This paper presents a novel, probabilistic account of the morphosyntactic expression of recipients

Hanjung Lee. 2020. Ditransitive Asymmetries and Quantifier Scope in Korean. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 45-3, 619-650. Despite free word order and the rich case marking system, dative constructions in Korean have been analyzed as syntactically analogous to the English dative alternation. On the basis of a careful examination of quantifier scope interpretation in two different dative constructions, this paper challenges this analysis and argues for an alternative analysis which posits a differ