미래 시제와 인식 양태의 통합적 분석: ‘(으)ㄹ 것이’

On the Interrelationship between Epistemic Future and Epistemic Modality: The Case of (u)l-kes-i

The goal of the current paper is to investigate a unified analysis of integrated meaning of future prediction and epistemic modality in Korean. In particular, we focus on the case of the periphrastic construction (u)l-kes-i ‘will/must’. Importantly, when the past tense morpheme ess/ass combines with (u)l-kes-i, only the epistemic reading arises. Given the set of empirical data, we address the following questions: First, how are the future prediction meaning and the epistemic modal meaning related each other? Second, what is the licensing condition of (u)l-kes-i? For the answers to the questions, we suggest the following: First, the default meaning of (u)l-kes-i is that of epistemic modality. Second, by adding to the specific prospective aspect operator, we can get the future prediction reading and solve the puzzle on the case of past tense morpheme. The theoretical implication of current work is that from the crosslinguistic view, Korean data can suggest an extended spectrum of the conceptual relation between the future prediction and the epistemic modal in a unified way.