The Korean Sentence-Ending Suffix ney:Epistemicity vs. Cognitive Effects

Abstract

From So-Weol Kim's poem Sanywuhwa]In (28), the information is not against the poet's expectation. Since the previous accounts we reviewed in section 2 do not use or mention any example from poetry or songs, it is not clear whether they take this use of ney to be the same as the suffix ney they deal with. In my account, even strengthening effect is used with the suffix ney. So the suffix ney in poetry is analysed as the same ney that we have discussed so far. It conveys the speaker's cognitive effect yielded by relevant information. In section 3.2, I noted that ney is less often used when the information is strengthening the existing assumption since the effect may not be great enough to compensate the processing effort. In contrast, in poetry, the poet may well consider even the strengthening effect to be worthy of the additional processing effort.