This paper investigates two different types of topics in spoken Korean: ratified and unratified topics. Following Lambrecht and Michaelis (1998), it is first noted that topics are divided into ratified and unratified topics. It is then shown that rati...
This paper investigates two different types of topics in spoken Korean: ratified and unratified topics. Following Lambrecht and Michaelis (1998), it is first noted that topics are divided into ratified and unratified topics. It is then shown that ratified and unratified topics in English and French have different formal realizations. Like English and French, Korean is also shown to have the formal distinction of ratified and unratified topics; zero pronouns and unaccented bare NPs are used for ratified topics, and nun-marked NPs and the maliya-construction are used for unratified topics. The marker -nun is thus regarded as having the function of indicating unratified topics. As a related issue, this paper addresses contrastiveness associated with -nun, and it is argued that the contrastiveness related to -nun is a gradient notion.