구어 한국어에서 서술문 실현방법의 공시태와 통시태

Abstract

The purposes of this article are as followings: (1) to provide a detailed description of the realization of declarative sentences on the basis of a spoken corpus of Korean, (ii) to offer a statistical analysis of the frequency of different declarative forms; and (iii) to identify the historical and typological characteristics of Korean declarative sentences. Though declarative sentences in Korean are realized in various ways, our study reveals that the declarative sentences containing multi-functional endings such as -eo(어) occur with greater frequency than others in discourse. In this case, the multi-functional ending -eo marks mood, then a falling contour indicates declarative mood. The higher frequency of multi-functional endings is a result of historical change. In the transition to Modern Korean, the frequency of declarative sentences with distinct declarative mood suffixes decreased in proportion to sentences with multi-functional affixes. This has resulted in a greater reliance on prosodic cues to convey declarative mood. Therefore, in spoken Modern Korean, inflectional and prosodic means co-exist in the expression of declarative mood.