• Language and Information
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.59-79
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• 2014

This paper aims at exploring the processing mechanism of filler-gap dependency resolution and feature checking in Korean wh-constructions. Based on their findings on Japanese sentence processing, Aoshima et al. (2004) have argued that the parser posits a gap in the embedded clause in head-final languages, unlike in head-initial languages, where the parser posits a gap in the matrix clause. In order to verify their findings in the Korean context, and to further explore the mechanisms involved in processing Korean wh-constructions, the present study replicated the study done by Aoshima et al., with some modifications of problematic areas in their original design. Sixty-four Korean native speakers were presented Korean sentences containing a wh-phrase in four conditions, with word order and complementizer type as the two main factors. The participants read sentences segment-by-segment, and the reading times at each segment were measured. The reading time analysis showed that there was no such slowdown at the embedded verb in the scrambled conditions as observed in Aoshima et al. Instead, there was a clear indication of the wh-feature checking process in terms of a major slowdown at the relevant region.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Language and Information Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.365-374
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• 2007

This paper investigates the nature of Japanese argument cluster (Steedman 2000b). Based on Combinatory Categorial Grammar, a type-raising analysis of case particles which captures some aspects of the information structure in Japanese is discussed, including contrastive interpretation of coordination, wh-constructions, and some theme and rheme-related grammatical phenomena. These observations offer further support for the study of syntax, semantics, and phonology interface and the earlier analysis of English information structure.

• Language and Information
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.51-66
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• 2013

Korean is a wh-in-situ language where the wh-expression stays in situ with an obligatory Q-particle marking its interrogative scope. This paper briefly reviews some basic properties of the wh-question construction in Korean and shows how a typed feature structure grammar, HPSG (Pollard and Sag 1994, Sag et al. 2003), together with the notions of 'type hierarchy' and 'constructions', can provide a robust basis for parsing the wh-construction in the language. We show that this system induces robust syntactic structures as well as enriched semantic representations for real-time applications such as machine translation, which require deep processing of the phenomena concerned.

• Language and Information
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.109-125
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• 2015

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.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.9 no.spc
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• pp.131-148
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• 2003

This paper, conducted within the GB framework, investigates inversion phenomena in the functional categories, Focalization Phrases and Topicalization Phrases. The leading idea of this paper is that formal feature checking in these two functional categories is mostly responsible for inversion in which either verb or auxiliary verbs appear in front of subjects and also it will try to find an answer to the following questions: "What are the features that trigger the inversion?" and "Can all the inversion constructions explained by Haegeman's Focalization & Topicalization?" My discussion is largely based on English inversion constructions such as wh-inversion, negative inversion, and adverbial inversion. Also I will show there are some problems in Topicalization and Focalization analysis to explain some inversion constructions and present Rizzi(1999)'s analysis for those problems.