한국어 주격 표지 ‘-이/가’와 화제의 표시

Abstract

The Journal of Studies in Language 34.4, 593-605. Previous studies on Korean Case markers (e.g. Schutze, 2001; Hong, 2017) observe that nominal phrases bearing the Case markers ‘-i/ka’ can appear as topics in Korean sentences. However, there has been no discussion about exactly when this is possible. The purpose of this study is to investigate the conditions under which the nominative Case markers ‘-i/ka’ in Korean can be attached to nominal phrases which are used as the topic of a sentence. The present work argues that the nominative Case markers ‘-i/ka’ can be attached to topic nominal phrases when the nominal phrase is a ratified topic in the sense of Lambrecht and Michaelis (1998). When the topic appears in a sentence as a ratified topic, it cannot allow the regular topic markers ‘-un/nun’ because the main function of the regular topic markers ‘-un/nun’ is topic/frame introduction. According to Kim (2015), ‘topic/frame introduction’ indicates “an act of proposing a new topic/frame into the discourse for the purpose of either beginning a discourse or shifting/contrasting an existing topic/frame.” The present work also argues that another reason why the topic markers ‘-un/nun’ cannot appear after some nominal phrases is that bare nouns bearing the topic markers ‘-un/nun’ in Korean (e.g. haksayng-un ‘student-TOP’) at the beginning of a sentence generally has a generic interpretation. When a bare noun necessitates a specific interpretation rather than a generic interpretation, the topic markers ‘-un/nun’ cannot occur. (Mokpo National University)