Retrospection in Korean

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

I have tired to characterize the semantic side of the retrospective suffix –TE by presenting the following proposals among others.
(1) The conceptual structure underlying –TE is that of a transitive sentence of the shape 'Agent+S+Time+Predicate'. The REPOTER (speaker/hearer) functioning as the Agent, PAST functioning as Time, and PERCEIVE functioning as Predicate converge into the suffix –TE in their surface realization, leaving the complement S intact.
(2) The performative sentence or the matrix sentence of a quotative construction is responsible for the selection of the REPORTER (speaker, hearer, or somebody else), exclusiveness of the REPORTER, and tenacity of the observation meaning.
(3) The so-called 'non-equi-subject constraint' is not especially relevent to -TE. What is relevant to -TE in this connection is the tenacity of the observation meaning.
(4) -TE is not restricted to past events alone. The event time and the time of PERCEIVING the event do not have to be the same for a grammatical expression.
(5) The reference point of the PAST in -TE is always the utterance time, except in imaginary situations in which case the reference point may be in the future.
(6) Time sequence between an embedded -TE event and the matrix event is constrained largely by the rules of the empirical world of experience.
(7) The common claim that -TE contains an imperfective meaning is not true. The imperfective meaning comes from the unmarked counterpart of the perfective.
(8) The abstract predicate PERCEIVE is ‘natural’ semantic class that consists of OBSERVE, EXPERIENCE, and INFER, which are mutually exclusive, being conditioned by underlying structural relations. These conditioning factor are equi-time, equi-subject, performative domination, experience verb, and the perfective.
(9) An embedded sentence (with or without -TE)and the corresponding unembedded sentence do not have the same underlying structure, because the former lacks the performative sentence which carries an illocutionary force.