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Semantics of Korean Sentence-final Ending ‘-guna’

  • Korean Semantics
  • 2014, 43(), pp.219-245
  • Publisher : The Society Of Korean Semantics
  • Research Area : Humanities > Korean Language and Literature

Park Jaeyon 1

1아주대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This study aims to examine the semantic properties of Korean sentence-final ending ‘-guna’. In the semasiological perspective, the primary meaning of ‘-guna’ is “acquiring new knowledge accompanied with thinking”. The semantic focus of ‘-guna’ is not on the degree of assimilation, but on the procedure of knowing itself, so the meaning of ‘-guna’ is related to the category of assimilation just in indirect way. However, in the onomasiological perspective, it could be considered that ‘-guna’ specifies the property of ‘unassimilated knowledge’. Even though ‘-guna’ is not directly related to evidentiality, it ‘is used’ to express an information by speaker’s inference. This is because an inference is a kind of ‘thinking.’ The property of ‘inference’ that ‘-guna’ can express is different from ‘guess’ or ‘probability’ of ‘-gess-’ in that ‘-guna’ is neutral in the epistemic judgement.

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