Multiple Case Marking as Default Case Copying: A Unified Approach to Multiple Nominative and Accusative Constructions in Korean

Previous Proposals and Problems Regarding the key question, two main streams of proposals are basically discernible. One stream maintained that both NP1 and NP2 are subject, trying to define various notions of subject: e.g., Yu (1909) called them big and small subject, Yoon (2003, 2007) major and grammatical subject, and Lee (2007) subject [Spec, RefP] and subject [Spec, TP], respectively. The other stream posited that only NP2 is subject, proposing that NP1 is topic or focus: e.g., Hong (1991) topic vs. subject; Rhee (1999) topic/focus vs. subject; Yoon (1986), Schütze (2001), Kim (2000, 2001, 2004), Kim & Sells (2007), and Kim, Sells & Yang (2007) focus vs. subject; Park (2003) focused subject vs. subject; Choi (2012) sentential specifier vs. subject. But there remain many essential problems unsolved in the first stream of reasoning, as partly pointed out by Chae & Kim (2008) among others. First of all, a clause with more than one subject is highly odd from a perspective of theory of grammar. Second, there is no straightforward answer to the question of what the logical structure of the clause looks like. Third, the relationship between the various notions of subject – be it big or small, or major or grammatical – is extremely vague. Fourth, there is no convincing independent evidence for