A study of the discourse-functional properties of truth-related expressions in English and Korean

This study discusses discourse-pragmatic characteristics of truth-related expressions in English in comparison with those of Korean. It examines how they become to acquire a variety of discourse-pragmatic functions such as an emphatic marker, a hesitation marker, an attention getter, an agreement marker and a specificity indicator. In this study, we propose that truth-related lexical expressions in English, originally analyzed as an adverb or noun, acquire a new grammatical function denoting various things from their corresponding lexical items as a noun or an adverb through grammaticalization. We find that truth-related expressions may be found anywhere in a clause (clause-initial, clause-medial or clause-final position), but where they appear in a clause mostly depends on the meaning of their corresponding lexical items as well as their communicative functions. We also show that the most distinctive communicative function that a truth-related expression of any kind can have is that of an emphatic marker, because its lexical meaning is associated with truth-value. Finally, this study points out that truth-related expressions in English share many similarities with those of Korean in their structural and functional properties, but they differ in a few respects because of differences in language use between two languages. (Pusan National University)