Research

Interrogative Semantics, Modality & Inference

My research examines modality, disjunction, and question semantics in Korean, focusing on modalized questions, inquisitiveness, and nonveridical equilibrium. Recent work extends to mood selection, embedded interrogatives, and concessive constructions.

Selected papers
Kang, Arum and Suwon Yoon. 2020. From Inquisitive Disjunction to Nonveridical Equilibrium: Modalized Questions in Korean. Linguistics 58(1): 207–244. doi
Kang, Arum and Suwon Yoon. 2022. Two Types of Subjunctive in Korean: Interaction between Inquisitiveness and Nonveridicality. Empirical Issues in Syntax and Semantics 14: 113–133. slides proceedings
Supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (2022–2023)

Definiteness, Quantification & Reference

This line of work examines definiteness, reference, and anaphora in articleless languages — particularly Korean and Mandarin Chinese. The Korean marker ku is analyzed as a domain restrictor; related work covers donkey anaphora and coreference resolution.

Selected papers
Kang, Arum. 2021. Marking Definiteness in an Articleless Language: The Role of the Domain Restrictor KU in Korean. Language and Linguistics 22(2): 301–336. pdf
Park, Myung-Kwan and Arum Kang. 2024. Anaphoric Definites without a Determiner: Korean vs. Chinese. Journal of Cognitive Science 25(1): 67–124. doi
Supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (2024–2025)

Rhetorical Questions & Discourse Inference

This work examines rhetorical questions in terms of polarity focus, verum effects, and discourse-updating inference in Korean.

Selected papers
Kang, Arum. 2024. A study on rhetorical questions in Korean: From the view of Verum Focus (한국어 수사 의문문 분석: 진리치 초점의 관점에서). 언어와 언어학 105: 1–30. doi
Supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (2025–2027)

Additional Research Directions

Related work addresses Korean Sign Language semantics (definiteness, scalarity) and corpus-based approaches, including LLM evaluation of epistemic and pragmatic inference.

Selected papers
Kang, Arum, Youngju Choi and Min-Joo Kim. to appear. Anaphoric Definiteness in Korean Sign Language: The Role of NPLOC and NP-IXTHIS. Proceedings of the 43rd West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics.
Lee, Yebin, Sanghoun Song and Arum Kang. 2025. Assessing GPT Models' Sensitivity to Epistemic Meanings in Korean Periphrastic Construction. Proceedings of the 39th Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation (PACLIC 39), pp. 84–93. pdf
Kang, Arum and Youngju Choi. 2025. On the Scalarity of STRONG in KSL. Proceedings of the 36th Western Conference on Linguistics: 58–65.
Supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (2024–2026)

Grants

Principal Investigator
2025–2027 "The Structure of Rhetorical Questions and Commonsense Reasoning in Conversation: A Theoretical Linguistic Analysis and Deep Learning-Based NLP Approach." National Research Foundation of Korea (Research Grant for Junior Faculty).
2024–2025 "Bridging over Definiteness and Coreference Resolution in Korean: Utilizing Deep-learning Language Models." National Research Foundation of Korea (Research Grant for Junior Faculty).
2022–2023 "A Study on Subjunctive Mood in Korean: Using Corpus and Experimental Linguistic Data." National Research Foundation of Korea (Research Grant for Junior Faculty).
Co-Investigator
2025 Developing Corpus for Dialogue Reasoning with Contextualized Common Sense Inference. National Institute of Korean Language.
2024–2026 "Typological Studies of Korean Sign Language and Developing Story-Based KSL Teaching Model." National Research Foundation of Korea (Research Grant for Collaborative Research).
2022 Developing Corpus for Natural Language Inference. National Institute of Korean Language.
2021 Developing Korean CommitmentBank: (Non)factivity and (Non)veridicality. National Institute of Korean Language.
2020 Developing Korean CommitmentBank: (Non)factivity and (Non)veridicality. National Institute of Korean Language.
2019 Corpus Verification: Coreference Resolution. National Institute of Korean Language.