한국어 조건문 항진명제에 대한 재고찰 = A Review on the Korean Conditional Tautologies

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The research subject of this study is the Korean conditional tautologies, and this study explores the Korean conditional tautologies in the conversations of daily life from the aspects of the syntactic and semantic features as well as the discourse functions of pragmatics. In terms of syntactic construction type, the findings through corpus are as below. First, the Korean conditional tautologies used in daily life are more diversified than previous research indicated. Second, the part of speech for predicates of the antecedent and following clauses connected by‘-(으)면’is not restricted, so it can be a noun, an adjective, or a verb. Third, the conditional sentences of previous clauses can combine with modality or mood markers. However, different subjects in antecedent and following clauses linked by mood markers are found in the Korean conditional tautologies. This is contradictory to the definition of the Korean conditional tautologies that the propositions in antecedent and following clauses should be the same. Thus, the Korean conditional tautologies with different subjects are named pseudo-tautologies in this study. Semantic features are found as follows. First, different from the nominal tautologies, such as‘N은 N이다’, the Korean conditional tautologies can combine with past tense and modality endings. Second, both antecedent and following clauses can merge with modality markers, and the modality markers are not necessarily the same. Pseudo-tautologies cannot only combine with mood markers, but they can also be used in shifting of moods. Third, the Korean conditional tautologies frequently co-occur with polarity adverbials. Forth, the Korean conditional tautologies indicate propositions related to topics discussed. The pragmatic findings of discourse functions are as below. First, the Korean conditional tautologies resonate with listeners or attempt to convince listeners to agree. Second, Korean conditional tautologies can be useful in making a conclusion or changing topics. Third, based on the Relevance Theory, this study maintains that the Korean conditional tautologies are a strategy of loose talk. Forth, the Relevance Theory can explain why the Korean conditional tautologies have the irony effect.