The aim of this study is to reveal the syntactic and semantic properties of ‘-keyss-’ in Korean and examine the usage patterns. We based our analysis on the corpus of four genres; newspapers, novels, quasi-spoken, and spoken language. Examining the usage of ‘-keyss-’ through the corpus, we find that ‘-keyss-’ has diverse semantic properties and usage patterns depending on genres.
Examining the frequency of ‘-keyss-’, we see three kinds as follows: First, in the spoken corpus compared with in the written corpus ‘-keyss-’ appears twice as often. Second, by genre, ‘-keyss-’ appears, in order of increasing frequency, newspapers < novels < quasi spoken < spoken. Third, the usage patterns are different regarding on genres.
Most of the ‘-keyss-’ could be translated as ‘supposition’ or ‘willingness’. In the newspaper, however, ‘-keyss-’ is more often used to mean ‘will’ rather than ‘supposition’, and it is remarkable that ‘-keyss-’ is mostly used in a pattern of the quotation which express the ‘willingness’ of the subject as a third person. On the contrary, in the novel, ‘-keyss-’ has more often the meaning of ‘supposition’ rather than ‘willingness’. It shows that there is a different aspect of the usage depending on the genre, even though the written language is the same. Especially, the spoken corpus has an overwhelming number of idiomatic expressions such as alkesssupnida (‘I understand’), kamsahakesssupnida (‘I appreciate’), for which the meaning of ‘willingness’ and ‘supposition’ is hard to apply.