This paper retraces the development of Database Semantics (DBS) from its beginnings in Montague grammar. It describes the changes over the course of four decades and explains why they were seen to be necessary. DBS was designed to answer the central theoretical question for building a talking robot: How does the mechanism of natural language communication work? For doing what is requested and reporting what is going on, a talking robot requires not only language but also non-language cognition. The contents of non-language cognition are re-used as the meanings of the language surfaces. Robot-externally, DBS handles the language-based transfer of content by using nothing but modality-dependent unanalyzed external surfaces such as sound shapes or dots on paper, produced in the speak mode and recognized n the hear mode. Robot-internally, DBS reconstructs cognition by integrating linguistic notions like functor-argument and coordination, philosophical notions like concept-, pointer-, and baptism-based reference, and notions of computer science like input-output, interface, data structure, algorithm, database schema, and functional flow.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the usage of Korean markers -(n)un and -i/ka in editorial texts focusing on information structure. Noun phrases ending with the markers -(n)un and -i/ka were annotated semi-automatically using a corpus obtained from an online newspaper. Two important factors to determine the choice of markers were examined with the annotated data: referential givenness/newness and position in a sentence. Referential givenness and newness were adopted as indicators of information structure, topic and focus respectively. In addition to quantitative analysis, qualitative analysis was conducted on the selected data. The results suggest that both the marker -(n)un and -i/ka could carry a topic and a focus reading. Sentence position also played a crucial role in determining the marker, and the marker -i/ka was used more frequently in a later position of a sentence than the marker -(n)un.

It has been widely accepted that Korean -i/ka, known as the nominative marker, can give rise to exhaustivity effect. However, it has been rarely discussed and still remains unclear how and why the particle can convey exhaustivity. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on this issue, based on Kim's (2014) analysis of the function of -i/ka. The main claim is that the exhaustivity expressed by -i/ka is a pragmatic effect derived from the interaction of the function of -i/ka, namely, unique specification, and the existence of alternatives to the denotation of an -i/ka-marked phrase in discourse context. Thus, the nature of the exhaustive implicature induced by -i/ka is not conventional but conversational.

In this paper, I show how oyey 'except' and pakkey 'but' in Korean are semantically different from but/except in English. The exceptive oyey is attached only to a definite NP and shows no restriction on the NP that it is associated with. The referent of the NP is removed from either the restrictor, or nuclear scope, of the associated NP, also giving rise to two different inferences about the exception phrase. The inferences are based on the condition that an expression should make a non-trivial meaning contribution in a sentence. The complement of oyey is really taken to be an exception in one interpretation, but not in the other. The exceptive pakkey is assumed to be a NPI. It does not require a phrase that a pakkey-phrase is associated with. It can be attached to any type of phrases, including a NP. Attached to a full phrase, it is interpreted as a scalar item. Its core meaning contribution is to remove weaker alternatives from the scalar set locally. For a general interpretation, the other meanings are captured globally. A pakkey-phrase with a demonstrative has a conjunctive meaning, and it can be analyzed like oyey in one of the two interpretations.

This paper explores the 1st person restrictions on the evidential -te, focusing on the cases where it appears with the speaker-oriented psych-predicates in Korean. It has been widely discussed that the 1st person restriction can be freely circumvented when -te is used with the speaker-oriented psych-predicates. However, based on the novel observation that such an obviation can be varied with respect to the types of the subordinate clauses which modify the evidential sentences, we propose that the 1st person restriction should be explained in terms of the situation-based felicity condition of -te, as discussed in Lim (2014): it arises if the situation where the speaker acquires evidence cannot be the same as, or be included by, the situation where the prejacent is true. To show this, we discuss how the meaning of the speaker-oriented psych-predicates interacts with the felicity condition of -te, and how this interaction makes the distinctive obviation environments of the 1st person restriction on -te, unlike other types of predicates.

In this study, I attempt to show two points about Korean sluicing. First, the semantic source of the null subject of the copula phrase in Korean sluicing is a null pronoun. This null subject pronoun may refer to either the antecedent indefinite individual or the antecedent event of the preceding clause. Second, depending on the presence/absence of postpositions in the remant wh-phrase, sluicing constructions are classified into two different semantic types: i) an equative clause and ii) a predicational clause.

Negative expressions have their semantic function of classical negation as a pure reverser of truth-values. They also have various kin and foes of their pragmatic functions such as association of bad feelings (Russell 1948), emphasis/attenuation by negative polarity items, sarcasm, and metalinguistic negation (MN). This paper explores how MN and descriptive negation (DN) differ and whether the difference creates pragmatic ambiguity (Horn 1987) or reflects merely contextual variations of one logical negation (Carston 1996). To test the debate, this paper treats certain degree modifiers licensed exclusively by MN as in Mia-ka POTHONG/Yekan yeppu-n key an-i-a [external neg] (vs. modifier NPIs like cenhye 'at all', licensed only by DN) and contrasts them with bad utterances of the MN modifiers in [short form neg] sentences (not for MN) such as Mia-ka POTHONG an yeppu-e. The ERP results of the well-formed vs. ill-formed conditions evoked the N400 at Cz in written stimuli and the N400 near the center on both hemispheres in spoken stimuli. The results suggest that the anomalies are meaning-related and tend to support the pragmatic ambiguity.