A Note on Korean Evidential -te-: Inference from Direct Perceptive Evidence

Abstract

Korean direct perceptive evidential -te- is said to introduce two puzzles. First, when it is used without any tense marker, the sentence hosting it is interpreted as past. Second, when it is used with so-called tense markers, such as past -ess- and future -keyss-, -te- introduces the implication similar to what is introduced by inferential evidentials in other languages. In this paper I first show that this apparent puzzle is misleading, by presenting some counterexamples which do not fit to what the ‘puzzle’ says. Then I propose a new lexical entry for -te-, according to which -te- introduces the presupposition that the speaker acquired some direct perceptive evidence before the utterance time, and then infers the prejacent from this direct perceptive evidence. I also show that this analysis accounts for the data in the previous puzzle as well as other data presented in this paper. Finally I point out several problems of previous analyses which are based on this ‘misguided’ puzzle.