영어 부사 완화 표지와 한국어 종결 표현

English Adverbial Hedge Expressions and Korean Endings: Grammar Explanation for English-Speaking Learners of Korean

This study investigates how English adverbial hedge expressions such as ‘probably’, ‘maybe’ and ‘perhaps’ appear in Korean. Based on a contrastive analysis of spoken English and Korean corpus, this study aims at providing an explicit explanation for English-speaking learners of Korean. The three main findings from the analysis are as follows: Firstly, adverbial hedge expressions are much more commonly employed in English compared to Korean, and they often appear as endings without adverbs in Korean. Secondly, Korean textbooks tend to devote most of their attention to English verbal hedges, neglecting English adverbial hedges. Lastly, when English adverbial hedge expressions are used with deontic modalities such as “maybe you should”, Korean uses a negative interrogative sentence, which literally translates as “don’t you think you should”.