A Corpus-based Study of the Truth-related Words in Korean Used as Discourse Markers

한국어에 나타나는 '진실' 표현 어휘의 담화표지 기능 연구

This study investigates how the truth-related words in Korean, which were originally noun or adverb with 'truth' related meaning, can be used as discourse markers with the functions such as 'emphatic marker', 'attention getter', or 'hesitation marker', and it argues that such functions of the discourse markers are the result of grammaticalization process. That is to say that the truth-related words have acquired new functions as discourse markers from their corresponding lexical items as a noun or an adverb through grammaticalization process. In this study, we demonstrate that the truth-related words tend to appear sentence-initially or sentence-medially when they are used as discourse markers. We also show that they are most likely to be used as emphatic marker because of the lexical meaning of the truth-related words. Finally, we state that truth-related words differ from one another in where they appear and what function they are used with.