한국어에서의 영논항의 본질

The Nature of the Null Arguments in Korean

The purpose of this paper is to reconfirm that the null arguments (the null subject and null object) in Korean should be identified as empty NPs, not as pro under Kim s (1991) argument ellipsis analysis, not under Huang s (1984, 1987) null-topic variable analysis, Otani and Whitman s (1991) VP ellipsis Analysis, and Moon s (2010) pro analysis. To begin with, the merits and drawbacks of the three analyses except Kim s analysis are examined: especially we focus on Moon s analysis because she claims that the null arguments should be identified as pro in Korean unlike the argument in the analysis we adopt. According to the argument ellipsis analysis we take, the null NPs in the object position must be empty NPs with no featural content. Using the analysis, we attempts to solve the problems we find in the three analyses. Furthermore, in this paper we apply Kim s analysis to the null NPs in the subject position and argue that they, too, should be treated as empty NPs because the property of these NPs is the same as that of the NPs the object position in that they can allow sloppy identity readings and strict identity readings. As a result, we reached that the null arguments in Korean must be empty NPs, contra Moon s analysis.