Namai (2000) argues that Japanese subject honorification is not a syntactic agreement phenomenon, based on some observations such as honorific coordination or reciprocal licensing. In this squib, using Korean subject honorification, we show that Namai s arguments do not carry over to Korean, where a syntactic analysis is called for. Specifically, we propose that a functional category H is an honorific-phi probe, and that subject honorification happens when the honorific verbal si in H triggers agreement with a nominal referent in Spec of vP.
1. Introduction
2. Arguments against a Syntactic Perspective
3. Syntactic Perspective
4. Conclusion