2020, Vol.67, No.

Korean Semantics 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 1.11

pISSN : 1226-7198 / eISSN : 2734-0171
https://journal.kci.go.kr/semantics

This study aims to analyze the meaning and function of epistemic forms ‘-ji’ and ‘-jan-’. This study examines their semantics in terms of epistemic modality and shows how they function in a witness examination process. The first part of this study shows that both ‘-ji’ and ‘-jan-’ have an epistemic property which dictates that both the speaker and the listener have a knowledge the information. I further suggest that the difference between ’-ji’ and ‘-jan-’ does not come from the epistemic state of the listener but the property of assimilation about the listener; ‘-ji’ assumes that the listener has a knowledge about the information, but ‘-jan-’ further assumes that the listener has an ‘assimilated knowledge.’ The second part of the study suggests that both epistemic forms serve a function of ‘accusing’ during witness examination in a hearing. Since they signal that both the speaker and the listener already know about information, it puts high pressure to the listener that he/she must admit about the proposition. Therefore, they can function as a device to pressure the witnesses to admit their wrongdoing.

The purpose of this study is to classify the types of the construction ‘-ulkka po-’ based on the syntactic characteristics and to reveal the meaning of each type. The functions and meaning of ‘-ulkka po-’ appears to be different depending on the syntactic environment. Therefore the types of constructions are classified by syntactic environment. And meanings of each types are provided. ‘-ulkka po-’ constructions with connective endings bare [speculation], [apprehension], or [expectation] meaning. It is also noteworthy that the meaning of [apprehension] is stronger than the meaning of [expectation]. ‘-ulkka po-’ constructions with final endings signify [speculation], [intention], [warning], or [rhetoric question] meaning. The [expectation], [apprehension], [intention], and [rhetoric question] meaning were derived from [speculation] meaning, while [threatening] was derived from [intention]. However, the construction of [speculation] is a quatative construction rather than auxiliary verb construction.

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the bias meaning of the long form negative polar question in Korean. In order to understand Korean polar questions and their meanings, this paper attempts to understand what exactly the bias means and investigate in what context the bias reading can arise. This paper will show the distributional properties of the various types of negative polar questions in the united way. Based on the distributional patterns of the negative polar questions, this paper will explain the semantic/pragmatic properties of Korean negative polar questions formally. This paper basically follows Romero and Han’s (2004) analysis which claims that the CG-managing operator VERUM is involved in the semantic representation of a negative polar question. Since Korean negative polar question does not allow Ladd’s ambiguity in its high negation form, however, departing from the VERUM-based analysis, it is not assumed that the negative form moves from the lower NegP to the higher NegP. Instead, it is assumed that in Korean high negation negative question involves VERUM operator, whereas low negation negative question does not involve VERUM operator in its semantic representation. In the case of low negation questions, following Goodhue(2018), it is assumed that the bias meaning can arise from the general pragmatic reasoning.