Between Questions and Anti-Specificity: The Evolution of Korean wh-Indeterminates

Abstract

This study examines the morphological and semantic properties of Korean wh-indeterminates, focusing on two types: wh-na (free choice items) and wh-inka (epistemic ignorance indefinites). We argue that both forms do not inherently yield wh-question meanings but shift interpretation through existential binding. Additionally, we demonstrate that inka emerges from the reanalysis of a question marker (nka), whereas na evolves from a nominal particle to a question marker. These findings reveal that the grammaticalization of Korean wh-indeterminates is neither unidirectional nor uniform. Our analysis further shows that a single morphological source can produce distinct interpretive outcomes across languages, as exemplified by wh-inka’s anti-specificity marker, which encodes both epistemic ignorance and anti-honorific nuances. Overall, this study sheds light on the complexity of wh-indeterminate systems and broadens our understanding of how question markers interact with indefinite semantics in crosslinguistic contexts.