Feature unification and constraint satisfaction in parsing Korean case phenomena

For a free-word order language such as Korean, case marking remains a central topic in generative grammar analyses for several reasons. Case plays a central role in argument licensing, in the signalling of grammatical functions, and has the potential to mark properties of information structure. In addition, case marking presents a theoretical test area for understanding the properties of the syntax-morphology interface. This is why it is no exaggeration to say that parsing Korean sentences starts from work on the case system of the language. This paper reports the project that develops a Korean Resource Grammar (KRG, Kim and Yang 2004), built upon the constrain-based mechanisms of feature unification and multiple inheritance type hierarchies as an extension of HPSG (Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar), and shows that the results of its implementation in the Linguistic Knowledge Building System (cf. Copestake 2002) prove its empirical and theoretical efficiency in parsing case-related phenomena.