By offering solutions to long-standing problems like quantification, relativization, topicalization, and negation in Korean syntax, the present dissertation aims to show the limitations of any approach which concentrates on the sentence as a linguistic unit or which takes semantics to be interpretative. One possible solution suggested here is a topic-by-topic approach, with the idea that there are two basic types of sentences: introductory sentences which introduce the existence of an object or fact, and other sentences which assert things other than the existence of that item. Chapter two covers quantification; chapter three discusses restrictive and non-restrictive clauses; chapter four considers topicalization; and chapter five deals with negation. Appendix one discusses formal constraints on the deletion of reflexive pronouns and considers the role of presupposition in grammar in the area of pronominalization by deletion. Other appendixes list the rules used in the paper and Korean particles. A bibliography is included. (Author/VM)