A Pragmatic and Sociolinguistic Perspective to Subject Expression in Spoken Korean: With Focus on First and Second Person
Creators: name: Lee, Na Rah
Publisher: name: The Australian National University
Year: 2019

description: The current thesis examines pragmatic effects of first and second person subjects that are overtly expressed in spoken Korean. While much literature has focused on the syntactic mechanism of subject omission in Korean as a pro-drop language, relatively little attention has been given to what conditions subjects to be not omitted but overtly expressed. In this study, I focus on pragmatic and sociolinguistic interpretation of subjects that are overtly expressed, specifically first and second person that are not just an agent of a predicate in a sentence but also an active participant of spoken discourse. In order to test the actual use of overt first and second person subjects, I adopt three spoken Korean corpora (Sejong Spoken Corpus, CallFriend Telephone Conversation and TV drama scripts of ten episodes) totalling approximately 45,000 words. For every predicate spoken in an utterance, I mark whether the subject is expressed or unexpressed and in what reference form it is realised if expressed. Contextual aspects such as social relationship and age difference between speakers are also considered as significant in analysing the meaning of an overtly expressed subject in addition to linguistic cues. The distribution of first and second person subjects in the corpora reveals that the rates of subject expression are 31% for first person and 22% for second person and the expressed subjects are in various referential forms rather than simply in first or second person pronouns. I argue that the overt expression of first and second person subject involves M-implicature (Levinson, 2000) that is raised by a marked expression while there is an unmarked alternative. Since unexpressed subjects are found more frequently in spoken Korean, it can be understood that the speaker of an overt subject intends to express certain pragmatic meaning that is not caused by an unexpressed subject. As claimed in some of the literature in Korean linguistics (e.g., Jeong, 2007; H. Kim, 1999; W. Kim, 1996; Oh, 2007), an overt subject tends to appear in the context of contrast or turn shift in our data. After redefining the scopes of contrast and turn shifting for our analysis, I confirm that overt first and second person subjects are widely and actively engaged in displaying contrast and discourse organisation in spoken discourse. For instance, an overt first or second person subject plays an important role to maintain a contrastive status between different referents in the discourse. In organising discourse, an overt first or second person subject are often used to indicate the speaker's intention to take a turn or give a turn to the interlocutor, respectively. In addition to ensuring contrast and turn shifting, I find that overt first and second person subjects have emphatic and interpersonal functions. For the emphatic function, an overt first or second person subject is used to attract extra attention to the subject of the particular speech act, which is much less obvious in the case of an unexpressed subject. Overt first or second person subjects with emphatic function are frequently found in certain speech acts that include recalling information to confirm, taking responsibility and giving credit. The interpersonal function is in effect when an unusual referential choice for a first or second person subject is used and implies a marked meaning. Speakers are found to choose different referential forms from what is normally expected in the context in order to deliver interpersonal attitudes such as intimacy or politeness. In spoken Korean discourse, an overt subject can raise multiple effects that are not conveyed by an unexpressed alternative. Applying extensive discourse analysis on empirical data, this research attempts to shed light on explaining the phenomenon of subject expression that has been less well understood in the literature of the grammar of subject omission.