Deictic linking and nominative Case unmarking in Korean

Abstract

This paper investigates Nominative Case unmarking in Korean. Kwon and Zribi-Hertz (2008) and Lee (2020) suggest that this unmarking occurs in direct perception situations when the agent role of a participant is evident from the immediate context. They propose an analysis based on information structure, highlighting the reanalysis of Nom Case-less subject NPs as the matrix focus in the neutral thetic f-structure. However, this paper provides an alternative account, suggesting that Nominative Case unmarking arises from the interaction between syntactic structure and the semantics/pragmatics of bare common NPs, which lack determiners but have deictic links. Drawing on Wilschiko's (2011) theory of nominal licensing, this study argues that Nom Case-less bare NPs in subject position encode contextually salient entities and are grammatically licensed through deictic anchoring, eliminating the necessity for Case features. In essence, we propose a Nom Case unmarking strategy that applies to deictically linked bare common NPs in general.