This paper examines tasi and tto, two Korean adverbs with roughly the same semantic value of again. It presents two empirical generalizations: (i) semantically tasi can mark the recovery of the original state, modifying an eventuality that is token-identical to a contextually-given eventuality, whereas tto is only limited to mark a simple repetition, thus modifying a type-identical event; (ii) functionally tasi can modify result states, but tto cannot. Then, it illustrates how the functional difference of result state modification can be accounted for by the notion of default events.

In this paper I discuss two markers for specificity, etten and han, in Korean. First, I discuss their structural properties and claim that etten is a determiner, and han is a numeral preceded by an implicit existential quantifier. Then I discuss four uses of etten and two uses of han, and show when they are used as specificity markers. There are various properties of the two specificity markers, some of which they have in common. I take them as properties of specificity markers in general. The properties only one of them has are taken to come from the original meanings of the two morphemes. I claim that specific indefinites range over individual concepts, which lead to the properties they have in common.

Since Perlmutter (1978) proposed the Unaccusativity Hypothesis, the past two decades have seen a flourish of studies investigating the potential validity of unaccusativity in Korean. The central contentious issues have been whether unaccusativity can also be assumed in Korean, and, if so, what criteria could be proposed to discern the unaccusativity among various predicates. In this paper, several suggestions made theoretically and experimentally to address the semantic and/or syntactic distinction of the two types of Korean intransitive predicates are critically reviewed and evaluated from the standpoint that there is a close correlation between syntax and lexical semantics of intransitives. It is proposed, then, that the Korean unaccusativity can be reliably differentiated through the combined semantic criteria of [${\pm}$agentive] and [${\pm}$active]. In addition, case alternations in long form negation constructions are shown to be the most reliable and valid syntactic criteria for testing Korean unaccusatives.

The semantic literature on definiteness and specificity shows that the former is relatively an established notion, whereas the latter is still a vague notion that needs to be more clarified and confirmed. Given this, Ionin (2006) argues for the reality of specificity based on the informal use of this. She proposes this in spoken English as a specificity marker which has a semantic feature indicating "peaker intent to refer" and "noteworthiness." She also provides as evidence the results of some crosslinguistics studies including an L2 acquisition study with both L1-Russian and L1-Korean L2-English learners. However, this paper will argue that the informal use of this does not seem to mark specificity according to Ionin's definition of specificity. It will also be argued that the L2 acquisition study cannot be used as evidence for the reality of specificity. Based on these arguments, this paper will try to redefine specificity, based on the notions of existence and uniqueness.

This paper reanalyzes examples with missing verbs. Northern Mandarin rejects argument nominal phrases after a silent verb, as well as silent verbs inside islands. These restrictions suggest a grammatical process which silences verbs. I propose that these restrictions are the result of VP-topicalization followed by ellipsis. This analysis accounts for the island sensitivity of these constructions: since VP-topicalization feeds ellipsis, constructions with elided VPs are not derivable from configurations where movement is impossible. Also, to avoid topicalization along with the VP, the argument must move out of VP; the subsequent topicalization of the VP containing the argument's trace would then give rise to a configuration where that trace c-commands the moved-out DP. Adjuncts do not pose a problem because they are located outside of that smallest VP-shell. The data presented here are accommodated by neither of Tang's (2001) proposals for silent verbs (gapping and empty verbs). Instead, they provide support for a third source for silent verbs, VP-ellipsis via topicalization.