Overt Case and Covert Case in Korean*46

In this paper, I concern myself with the relationship of overt and covert Case to two types of word order in Korean; free vs. rigid word order. To characterize this relationship I will essentially assume the Attract-F theory in Chomsky 1995. I assume that (overt) Case markers are Ds with phonological features and Case features, and phonologically null (covert) Case markers also exist as their counterparts. These two types of Case markers are heads of DPs and hence subject to feature movement. Assuming that the overt Case markers indicate the strong D-feature of I and v while the covert Case markers signify the lack of the strong D-feature of I and v, we can successfully explain the contrast between overt Case and covert Case in Korean.