Corpus-based analysis of the usage of Korean markers -(n)un and -i/ka in editorial texts

The aim of this paper is to investigate the usage of Korean markers -(n)un and -i/ka in editorial texts focusing on information structure. Noun phrases ending with the markers -(n)un and -i/ka were annotated semi-automatically using a corpus obtained from an online newspaper. Two important factors to determine the choice of markers were examined with the annotated data: referential givenness/newness and position in a sentence. Referential givenness and newness were adopted as indicators of information structure, topic and focus respectively. In addition to quantitative analysis, qualitative analysis was conducted on the selected data. The results suggest that both the marker -(n)un and -i/ka could carry a topic and a focus reading. Sentence position also played a crucial role in determining the marker, and the marker -i/ka was used more frequently in a later position of a sentence than the marker -(n)un.