Under the empirical analysis of tag questions in English and Korean, this paper argues that the judgement of relative factuality, by the tagging speaker, is an epistemic version of modality, and that the imposition of this modal value necessitates the...
Under the empirical analysis of tag questions in English and Korean, this paper argues that the judgement of relative factuality, by the tagging speaker, is an epistemic version of modality, and that the imposition of this modal value necessitates the performative ranking of the requesting activity towards the biased information. This approach amplifies the view that the speaker's seeking confirmation or agreement from the hearer is brought into discourse, by leaning towards the information accommodated by the speaker's presupposition. Given that the tagging speaker's supposition of the mutual commitment is resolved by the speaker-hearer's common ground, we suggest, the suppositional meaning prevalently inherent in tag questions can be better grasped as laying out the speaker's accessibility to the presupposition accommodation towards the activation of the biased information. The proposed analysis also reveals that the tagging speaker's emphatic request may well be reduced to a manner of understatement to soften the presumptuousness of the speaker, not to redress the hearer's face.