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A Comparative Study on Future Grammatical Markers in Korean and Mandarin - Focusing on future gram ‘-겠-’ and ‘要’

  • The Journal of Study on Language and Culture of Korea and China
  • Abbr : JSLCKC
  • 2023, (67), pp.119-148
  • DOI : 10.16874/jslckc.2023..67.005
  • Publisher : Korean Society of Study on Chinese Languge and Culture
  • Research Area : Humanities > Chinese Language and Literature
  • Received : January 10, 2023
  • Accepted : February 20, 2023
  • Published : February 28, 2023

OH YOONJI 1,  Kim HyeKyung 1

1고려대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This research aims to study how the notion ‘future’ is expressed in Mandarin and Korean from a trans-East Asian perspective. The purpose of this study is first, to check how the inevitable semantic relationship between the modality and future influences the grammatical markers related to this notion in separate languages. Second, clarify the grammaticalization path of ‘要’ and ‘-겠-’ and discus if there and be an single universal path for grammaticalization of modality and future tense. Plus, verify the influence of the whole language system and diachronic change of other markers on the course of grammaticalization by studying the general typological difference between Mandarin and Korean. There are various ways to express the notion of ‘future’ in various languages that essentially reflect the speaker's perception and judgment. Future can be expressed through a complete tense system, forming a clear paradigmatic relation with past and the present. Future can also be expressed through context-dependent interpretation or other modality markers. Scholars have come up with different views on the grammatical status and grammaticalization process of elements that represent the future in each language. Grammarization is often defined as a process of language change by which content words lose their original meaning and become grammatical markers. The change from lexical and concrete contents to markers that solely serve grammatical functions is made through semantic bleaching and subjectification. The problem is that it is hard to define the grammaticalization path between 'future' and ‘modality’, for it is difficult to specify which of the two is more ‘semantically bleached’ or more ‘grammatical’ when the two notions are conceptually inseparable. This paper aims to show that grammaticalization of the modality marker and the future marker cannot be understood as an one-way process through comparison between ‘要’ and ‘-겠-’ which are the most used forms in expressing future respectively in Mandarin and Korean. Through this, we will show that the grammaticalization is in fact, gravely influenced by other components in the whole language system, and also by certain language’s typological characteristics. And thus, the path of grammaticalization might seem inconsistent at first glance. Through this study, we would like to present a rudimentary idea on how to examine the languages from a trans-Asian perspective and from which, derive language general facts.

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