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Article published In:
Pragmatics
Vol. 30:4 (2020) ► pp.557–585

Korean general extenders tunci ha and kena ha ‘or something’

Approximation, hedging, and pejorative stance in cross-linguistic comparison

ORCID logo | Claremont McKenna College
Using natural conversation corpora, I demonstrate that the Korean x-tunci ha ‘x-or do’ and x-kena ha ‘x-or do’, which originally list options (e.g., ‘x or y do’) have emerged as independent constructions that can indicate approximation, epistemic uncertainty, tentativeness, and even polite hedging. I argue that these Korean “general extenders” (Overstreet 1999) followed a similar (inter)subjectification process to English x-or something and Japanese x-tari suru ‘x-or do.’ I also illustrate how these two Korean general extenders specialize in different hedging strategies.
Ironically, Korean tunci ha and Japanese tari suru can also convey a speaker’s negative affective stance. I demonstrate that tunci ha was frequently used in making non-imposing suggestions (hedging) and obtained its negative affect in the context of suggesting an obvious but untried solution (i.e., the frustration of the suggesting speaker). This result differs from Suzuki (2008)’s argument of the Japanese case which attributes this development to a speaker’s non-committal attitude.
Keywords: disjunctive connective, general extender, hedging, affective stance, subjectification, intersubjectification, tunci , kena , or something , tari suru
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Previous studies on English or something and Japanese tari suru
  • 3.Two Korean general extenders and their distributional skewing
  • 4. Tunci general extender
    • 4.1Epistemic uncertainty and the tentativeness of a plan
    • 4.2Polite hedging
      • 4.2.1Propositional hedging
      • 4.2.2Speech act hedging
    • 4.3Speaker’s negative affective stance
      • 4.3.1Criticizing attitude toward Others
      • 4.3.2Pejorative stance toward the speaker’s own problems
  • 5. Kena general extender
    • 5.1Vague category and epistemic uncertainty
    • 5.2Qualification and propositional hedging with negation
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 3 December 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.18035.kim
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Takanashi, Hiroko
2023. The utterance-finaltari siteconstruction in interaction: a general extender as a play stance marker. Journal of Japanese Linguistics 39:1 ► pp. 81 ff. DOI logo
Kim, Minju
2022. Intersubjectivity, stance, and Korean general extenders. Journal of Pragmatics 193 ► pp. 253 ff. DOI logo

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