Null Arguments in Korean Sign Language

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the distribution and characteristics of null arguments in Korean Sign Language (KSL). Languages such as Spanish and Italian, which have a rich system of overt morphological agreement, allow subject-drop but not object-drop. For this reason, it has been said that the null arguments are licensed by rich verbal morphology. On the other hand, languages such as Korean and Chinese do not have a rich agreement system like Spanish and Italian. Thus, the verbs are used with the same ending regardless of person, number, and gender features. In this paper, we show that KSL is different from those languages like Korean and Chinese in that arguments can be dropped with both agreeing and non-agreeing verbs. In some contexts, in addition, null arguments of non-agreeing verbs are not allowed, whereas null arguments of agreeing verbs are totally acceptable. Therefore, to solve these problems, in this paper, we suggest hybrid analysis in licensing null arguments in KSL.