‘-겠-’의 발달에 대한 재론: ‘-게 엿-’을 ‘-게 되엿-’으로 해석하는 견해들에 대한 비판

Abstract

It is very well attested that the prefinal ending -keyss- in Present-day Korean has developed from -key ho-yes- in Middle Korean. But opinions are split on the original meaning that -key ho-yes- had before it underwent grammaticalization. Some scholars have the views interpreting that the original meaning of -key ho-yes- was identical or similar to that of -key twoy-yes-. The reason why they have such views is that they cannot understand the evolution of the modal meanings of -keyss- from the literal meaning of –key ho-yes-. In this paper their views above have been examined in detail and all of them have been proved untenable. None of the example words and sentences presented as evidence is acceptable as such. Most of them are based on the implicit assumption that the principle of compositionality holds for all complex expressions including fixed ones, which is not the case. One scholar has claimed that the causative -key ho- before -e is- had the meaning of -key twoy-. (The -key ho-yes- in question is the realization of the sequence of -key ho- and -e is-.) The claim is based on the fact that transitive verbs before -e is- were interpreted as passive when the object of the transitive verb and the subject of is- are coreferential. But the object of the causative -key ho- and the subject of is- are not coreferential, and hence the claim is untenable. On the other hand, there is no possibility of development of a new construction -key ho-yes- in which the object of -key ho- and the subject of is- are coreferential.We can understand the development of the modal meanings of -keyss- from the original literal meaning of -key ho-yes- with the assumption that the subjects of V-key and ho-yes- are coreferential. This assumption is based on the solid fact that so many sentences with the construction V-key ho-, in which the subjects of V-key and ho- are coreferential, are found in documents.