Article published in:
Pragmatics
Vol. 30:3 (2020) ► pp. 351–380

The Korean hortative construction revisited

Prototypical and extended functions

| Myongji University
| Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
This paper revisits the hortative -ca construction in Korean from a usage-based perspective, examining its functions in natural interactional spoken data The examination of the actual occurrence of -ca reveals its various functions: -ca indicates that the performer of the focal-event encoded in the utterance may be 1st person plural subject, i.e., the speaker and other interlocutors; 2nd person, i.e., the addressee(s); 1st person, i.e., the speaker; and 3rd person. Our findings provide direct evidence for the different degrees of prototypicality among these functions, which are reflected in their different frequency counts. Furthermore, this study proposes two novel functions of ca, the accordant imperative (to demand that the addressee agree with the speaker that the addressee perform the focal-event) and the speaker hortative (to ask the addressee to perform an action so that the speaker him-/herself can perform the focal-event).
Keywords: hortative construction, -ca , usage-based approach, spoken Korean, accordant imperative, speaker hortative
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Preliminaries
    • 2.1The hortative and related notions
    • 2.2Hortatives in Korean grammar
  • 3.Data analysis
    • 3.1Cohortative -ca: 1st person plural performers of the focal-event
      • 3.1.1-Ca in internal monologues
        • 3.1.1.1 Idiomatic expression: Eti poca ‘let’s see’
        • 3.1.1.2 Idiomatic expressions: -Cako and -cani
      • 3.1.2Co-occurrence of explicit references to participants
      • 3.1.3 Markers of the conditional: -Chi-ca and -ca-myen
    • 3.2Imperative -ca: 2nd person performer(s) of the focal-event
      • 3.2.1Polite imperative -ca
      • 3.2.2Accordant imperative -ca
    • 3.3Speaker hortative -ca: 1st person performer(s) of the focal-event
    • 3.4Exhortative -ca: 3rd person performer(s) of the focal-event
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 03 July 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.19014.kim
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The Korean hortative construction revisited
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Kim, Ahrim & Iksoo Kwon
2020. Hortatives, imperatives, and the directive speech-act continuum: A usage-based approach to the Korean -ca hortative construction. Lingua 245 ► pp. 102928 ff. Crossref logo

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