A grammar of mood and clausal adjunction in Korean

Abstract

This dissertation investigates whether something bigger than a proposition, such as moods and speech acts, could be subject to a semantic operation. In particular, this dissertation focuses on adjunct clause modification in Korean. I discuss three topics related to this issue. First, I discuss the causal connective -nikka 'because' in Korean. In Korean, -ese is only used to mark propositional causations, whereas -nikka can mark the (so-called) epistemic and the speech act level causation as well as propositional causation. I argue that such a difference is due to the fact that nikka-clauses target the mood of the main clause. I also explore Korean biscuit conditionals (BC). I explain why the acceptability judgments for Korean BCs are unpredictable. In Type 1 BCs, I show that the antecedent provides the addressee's decision problem and the consequent gives the information which leads the addressee to the best solution. In Type 2, I show that the antecedent modifies the speech act of the consequent clause by explicitly spelling out one of Searle's speech act rules. I also show that moods and speech acts can be interpreted in the scope of other semantic operators like conditionals. In Type 2 BCs, the antecedent clause embeds an exhortative mood, and the exhortative mood is needed to modify the following speech act. Lastly, I examine the two Korean conditional connectives -myen and -tamyen 'if'. I argue that while a myen-clause functions as a domain restrictor for any kind of modal operator, a tamyen -clause functions as a hypothetical conditional marker as well as a domain restrictor. I show that a myen -clause can be used either in a hypothetical conditional, which involves a supposition, or in a non-hypothetical conditional in which the if -clause functions as a simple domain restrictor. By contrast, a tamyen -clause morphologically includes hypothetical meaning, and so it can only be used in hypothetical conditionals. I show that the hypothetical meaning of -tamyen is gained by embedding a declarative mood marked phrase under a conditional.