On the Thetic Expressions in Korea

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

In this squib, I argue that thetic-categorial distinction is morphologically made in Korean and that the verbal morpheme -iya, among many others, is exactly the marker for expressing the focal function of the whole sentence. Another sentence ending -(i)ta can be recognized as a thetic marker in Korean. There are some differences between these two forms. E.g., the former is felicitously used when the speaker understands that there is at least one listener, while the latter can be used without the knowledge of the presence of the listener. To the best of my knowledge, thetic-categorical distinction in Korean has not been paid much attention to, though hinted at in the literature. So I first introduce the notion of thetic judgment and thetic-categorical distinction. Then I apply this notion to Korean and point out that the data that I will examine do show the distinction. That is, thetic vs. categorial distinction is clearly syntactically encoded in Korean. Although there may be many morphological markers for thetic judgment, I will confine myself to the discussion of two prominent cases, namely, -iya and -ita in this squib.

참고문헌 (Reference)

1 Marty,Anton, "er die Scheidung von grammatischem, logischem and psychologischen Subject resp" 3 : 174-190, 1897

2 Heltoft,L., "Topics and themes in Danish and universal grammar" University of Roskilde 1993

3 Ulrich,M., "Thetisch und kategorisch" Narr 1985

4 Haberland,H., "Thetic-categorical distinction. Encyclopedia of language and linguistics. Vol. 12" Elsevier 2006

5 Sasse,H.J., "The thetic/categorical distinction revisited" 25 : 511-580, 1987

6 Sasse,H.J, "The pragmatics of noun incorporation in Eastern Cushitic languages; Objects" Academic Press 1984

7 Kuroda,S-Y., "The categorical and the thetic judgment" 9 : 153-185, 1972

8 Lambrecht,K., "Sentence focus, information structure, and the thetic-categorical distinction" 13 : 366-382, 1987

9 Vattuone,B., "Notes on Genoese syntax: Kernel VOS strings and theme-rheme structures" 4 : 335-378, 1975

10 Lambrecht,K., "Information structure and sentence form: Topic, focus and the mental representation of discourse referents" Cambridge University Press 1994

11 Shibatani,M., "Grammaticalization of topic into subject; Approaches to grammaticalization, vol. 2" John Benjamins 1991

12 Van Valin, "Functionalism, anaphora and syntax" 14 : 169-219, 1990

13 Kuno,Susumu, "Functional sentence perspective: A case study from Japanese and English" 3 : 269-320, 1972

14 Mathesius, V., "Functional linguistics; Praguiana: Some basic and less known aspects of the Prague linguistic school" John Benjamins 1983

15 Bolinger,David, "English prosodic stress and Spanish sentence order" 37 : 152-156, 1954

16 Fuchs,A., "Accented subjects in all-new utterances; Wege zur Universalienforrschung" Narr 1980