Joungmok Lee

Joungmok Lee is a Lecturer of Korean in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Indiana University Bloomington's Hamilton Lugar School. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa's Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures in 2023, with a dissertation on the grammaticalization of 'kes' constructions in Korean. Prior to his current role, he taught Korean language courses at Penn State University, Harvard University, and the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa since 2012, and previously taught Korean as a second language in South Korea at Seoul Women's University and Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.

Education:

• Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Literatures (Korean language and linguistics), University of Hawai'i at Mānoa (2012-2023)
• MA in Teaching Korean as a Foreign Language, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (2005-2008)
• BA in Korean Literature and Language, Konkuk University (1997-2004)

Lee's research focuses on grammaticalization processes in Korean, particularly the evolution of nominalized constructions like '-nun kes' into modal expressions. His work bridges theoretical linguistics with pragmatic and discursive functions in natural language use, emphasizing the semantic and syntactic transformations of defective nouns into grammatical markers.