영논항의 비엄밀해석

Interpretations of Null Arguments: Evidence for a Flexible Null Topic Analysis and against a pro Analysis

We present, in this paper, a set of data showing that in the environment where non-strict, i.e. sloppy or indefinite, interpretations of null arguments are observed, overt pronouns do not yield the same interpretations. The data argue against pro Analysis since the analysis assumes that null arguments are silent forms of overt pronouns. On the other hand, we show that when a generic topic appears in the same data, its null argument variable can have a sloppy or indefinite interpretation while its overt pronoun variable does not have it. We then claim that, given that null topics are allowed in languages like Korean, the non-strict interpretations of null arguments can be accounted for by Flexible Null Topic Analysis, which assumes that null arguments are variables of null topics.