Contrastive discourse markers: An examination of their characteristics in Korean.

摘要

Contrastive Discourse markers (hereafter, CDMs) are expressions such as but, however, despite, and although that signal a contrast between two discourse segments. Using Fraser's (2005) account of English CDMs, this dissertation seeks to explore the syntactic, semantic, and sociolinguistic characteristics of the Korean CDMs, -(u)na/kulena, -ciman/kulehciman , and -(nu)ntey/kulentey, which can be roughly translated as but in English.;The present study utilizes written and spoken discourse drawn from the corpus of expository writings, excerpts from newspapers, lectures, a televised debate, Korean televised broadcasts, informal letters, and informal spontaneous conversations. The frequencies of the occurrences of the aforementioned Korean CDMs are counted by different types of corpus data to estimate potential patterns and to determine implications of these patterns, where they are found.;The present study found that -ciman and -(nu)ntey behave syntactically in a similar fashion in that the clause hosting -ciman and -(nu)ntey can be reversed, having them appearing at the end of a sentence. When applied Fraser's (2005) account of English but, -(nu)ntey works best to denote direct and indirect contrastive relationships.;The frequencies of each Korean CDM indicate that various factors such as formal vs. informal, spoken vs. written, interactive vs. monologic, and planned vs. spontaneous may play a part in triggering the use of specific CDMs, an area not described for English. Furthermore, when speakers of varying social status and age are involved, Korean speakers appear to employ different types of CDMs depending upon the addressee. For example, kuntey---a contracted form of kulentey---appearing in the initial position of a sentence, was used to a greater degree than -(nu)ntey, appearing in the final position of a sentence, when a high-status person refutes a low-status person's statement. On the contrary, a low-status person used -(nu)ntey to a greater degree than kuntey when refuting a high-status person's statement. The Korean system of CDMs sheds light on how sociolinguistic aspects of context play a role in the use and interpretation of CDMs.