Research Interests

• Korean language and linguistics
• Comparative study of East Asian languages
• Discourse-pragmatic and cognitive approaches to grammar
• Synchronic variation and language change: Grammaticalization, lexicalization

As a functional linguist, I am interested in discourse-pragmatics, linguistic typology and language universals. I seek functional explanations on why languages are structured in the ways they are through the ways human beings communicate with each other. I take the view that our communicative needs and strategies shape grammar, and grammar is the fossilizaton or routinization of recurrent communicative habits and patterns.

Recently, grammaticalization and synchronic variation are my main research areas. Many grammatical constructions and forms are developed from lexical words mainly due to the creativity of the speakers, which stem mainly from two brands of motivation. One is the speaker's desire to strengthen expressive power. Abstract grammatical relations are expressed with lexical words with concrete meanings such as body parts, basic spatial and temporal concepts. The other is the need to regulate communicative transaction. Not only linguistic tools are limited to express everything the speakers want to express, but also the speakers have to convey their subjective attitudes and emotions. A creative use of a word or construction leads the communication participants to draw inference from what is said, and that usage becomes conventionalized to be associated with that particular linguistic form. Grammaticalization could take different paths, and its consequence is synchronic variation. The focus of my current research is to find a conceptual network among the different uses of a linguistic form and reconstruct the grammaticalization path.

As a Korean language instructor, I pursue active learning through contextualized instruction. Students are expected to learn from contextualized dialogues in class rather than the instructor explains the grammar from the outset. Recently I am intrigued by infinite number of possibilities of teaching and learning through web-based technology. Although I doubt that classroom interaction can entirely be removed from language teaching, current web and multimedia technology can enhance the learners' chance to be contacted with the target language in more interesting and contextualized way than textbooks. Anyone interested in seeing part of my efforts in this regard, visit Korean language program.

Courses Taught

• All levels of Korean language
• EALC E233, Survey of Korean Civilization
• EALC E305/505, Korean Language and Culture
• EALC E421/520 Introduction to Korean linguistics (Formerly Korean: a linguistic description)
• EALC E505, Teaching Korean as a second language

Publication & Research Highlights

Books and monographs

• 2012. (Co-authored with 16 others) Standards for Korean Language Learning.  A Collaborative project of the Korean National Standards Task Force and the American Association of Teachers of Korean (AATK). American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL).
• 2005. (Co-authored with Sungdai Cho and Hye-Sook Wang). Integrated Korean: Advanced-Superior (Vol. 1 & 2). Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
• 2001. (Co-authored with Young-mee Yu Cho, Carol Schulz, Ho-Min Sohn, and Sung-Ock Sohn). Integrated Korean: Intermdiate (Vol. 1 & 2). Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
• 2000. (Co-authored with Young-mee Yu Cho, Carol Schulz, Ho-Min Sohn, and Sung-Ock Sohn) Integrated Korean: Beginning (Vol. 1 & 2). Korean Language Education and Research-Korea Foundation Textbooks in Korean language. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
• 1987. Discourse presupposition and the discourse function of the topic marker nun in Korean. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club.

Journal articles

• 2017.  Teaching Listener Responses to KFL Students. Korean Language in America (KLA) 21.2, 247-258.  2015. American Association of Teachers of Korean.
• 2006. Discussions and comments on S-Y. Moon (On the present tense morpheme in Cheju dialect of Korean, Morphology 6.1, 2004). 형태론  (Morphology) 8.1, 19-138. [In Korean]
• 2005. Issues and problems in teaching grammar and Korean language textbooks. 한국어 교육연구 (Studies in Korean Langauge Education) 16, 241-270. [In Korean]
• 2000. Two kinds of locatives in Korean revisited: a dynamic vs.static view. Korean Linguistics 10, 141-154, a journal of International Circle of Korean Linguistics.
• 1999. A discourse-pragmatic analysis of the Committal -ci in Korean: a synthetic approach to the form-meaning relation. Journal of Pragmatics 31, 243-275.
• 1995. A multi-perspective analysis of the temporal system in Korean. 언어 (Korean Journal of Linguistics) 20.3, 207-250. [In Korean]
• 1993d. The temporal system of noun-modifying (attributive) clauses in Korean from a typological perspective. Studies in Language 17.1, 75-110.
• 1993c. Cognitive constraints on expressing newly perceived information: With reference to epistemic modal suffixes in Korean. Cognitive Linguistics 4.2, 135-167.
• 1993b. Tense or aspect: The speaker's communicative goals and concerns as determinants, with respect to the Anterior -ôss- in Korean. Journal of Pragmatics 20, 327-358.
• 1993a. Discourse-pragmatic approach to grammar: toward a new direction of Korean linguistics. 주시경 학보 11, 3-49. Seoul: Cwusikyeng Research Institute & Tower Press. [In Korean]
• 1989. (Co-author with Sandra A. Thompson) A discourse account of the Korean accusative marker. Studies in Language 13.1: 105-128.

Other published articles

• 2022b. (Co-authored with Kyung-Eun Yoon and Sang-Seok Yoon) Assessment of interactional competence. The Routledge Handbook of Korean as a Second Language, ed. by Andrew Byon and Danielle Pyun. London and New York: Routledge.
• 2022a. Usage-Based Approach to Grammar in Language Teaching and Learning of Korean. The Routledge Handbook of Korean as a Second Language, ed. by Andrew Byon and Danielle Pyun. London and New York: Routledge.
  
• 2021. (Co-authored with Sun-Young Shin) Korean language assessment. Teaching Korean as a Foreign Language Theories and Practices, ed. by Young-mee Yu Cho, 147-168. London and New York: Routledge.
• 2015b.    Modality (Ch 14). The Handbook of Korean Linguistics, ed. by Lucien Brown and Jae Hoon Yeon, 249-268.  Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.
• 2015a. Tense and aspect (Ch 13). The Handbook of Korean Linguistics, ed. by Lucien Brown and Jae Hoon yeon, 232-248. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.
• 2003. Grammaticalization and synchronic variation: a unified account of the discourse-pragmatics of -na in Korean. Japanese/Korean Linguistics 11, ed. by Patricia Clancy.
• 2002. The structure of noun-complementation in Korean. Pathways into Korean language and culture: Essays in honor of Young-Key Kim-Renaud, ed. by Sang-Oak Lee, Gregory K. Iverson, Sang-Cheol Ahn, and Young-mee Yu Cho, 291-314. Seoul: Pagijong Press.
• 2002. "Grammaticalization, recategorization, and lexicalization: with reference to the development of some adjectives in Korean." Paper presented at "New Reflections on Grammaticalization 2," an international symposium, held on April 4-6, 2002, at University of Amsterdam.
• 2000. Grammaticalization and a panchronic view of grammar. 인지언어학 (Cognitive Linguistics), ed. By Keedong Lee. Seoul: Hankookmunhwasa [In Korean]
• 2000. "Discourse-pragmatics of adversative connectives: comparison among Korean, English, and Japanese," paper presented at the 12th International Conference on Korean Linguistics, July 13-15, 2000, Prague, Czech Republic.
• 1994. Discourse-pragmatic functions of sentence-type suffixes in Korean. Theoretical issues in Korean linguistics, ed. by Young-Key Kim-Renaud, 517-539. CSLI, Stanford Linguistics Society.
• 1988a. The morpho-syntax of interrogative sentences in Korean: A historical account. Papers from the Sixth International Conference of Korean Linguistics, ed. by Eung-Jin Baek, 381-402. University of Toronto, Canada.
• 1985. Causatives in Korean and the binding hierarchy. CLS 21.2 (Papers from the Para session on Causatives and Agentivity at the Twenty First Regional Meeting of Chicago Linguistics Society), 138-153.

Review articles

• 2001. Review of Sohn (1999), the Korean Language, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Anthropological Linguistics 43.4
• 1988b. Review of S-J. Hwang (1987): Discourse features of Korean narration. Book Notice, Language 64.3:646-647.

Websites

• Korean language program
• EALC K101, "Elementary Korean I"
• EALC K102, "Elementary Korean 2"
• EALC K201, "Second-Year Korean I"
• EALC K202, "Second-Year Korean 2"
• EALC K301, "Third-Year Korean I"
• EALC K302, "Third-Year Korean 2"
• EALC K401, "Fourth-Year Korean 1"
• EALC K402, "Fourth-Year Korean 2"
• Korean Multimedia Dictionary
• Learning Han'gul
• Critical Language Program