Syntactic, Semantics, and Pragmatic Constraints on `-Nun` Marking in Korean

Abstract

This paper argues that some of the confusion about -nun and -ka derives from mixing the levels--the syntactic, semantic, and discourse/pragmatic levels of language. It is assumed that syntactic, semantic, discourse/pragmatic constraints interact with each other and affect the way language is actually used, and they should be separately considered in order to explicate problems such as the functions of -nun and -ka in Korean. The data this paper is based on is a spoken corpus of narratives by ten old-aged people. The corpus consists of 19,208 words or 3,824 clauses. There are several syntactic constraints that forbid nun-marking and allow only ka-marking if subject is ever overtly marked. They include the subjects in existential clauses, embedded clauses, and subordinate clauses, etc. In some rare cases, this syntactic constraint on ka-marking can be overruled if the information is contrastive. It seems that -nun is semantically and pragmatically motivated particle. It seems that the basic semantic function of -nun is to mark contrastive information, In fact, -nun marks contrast on many levels: word-level, sentence-level, and episode level. It seems that they each have a different function in discourse. The first case of nun- marking is a contrastive focus. It is a focus in the sense that it is the unpredictable and pragmatically non-recoverable element in the utterance. The next category is sentential, contrastive topic -nun. Lastly, when -nun expands its domain beyond the sentence boundary, it marks an introduction of a new topic or switching to a new topic.