The scalar intensifier ku in Korean : The case of KUintensifier with anti-specific wh-indeterminates

Arum Kang. 2018. The scalar intensifier ku in Korean : The case of KUintensifier with anti-specific wh-indeterminates, Language and Information, 22-1, 73-89. The purpose of this paper is to present the account of the novel function of ku in Korean. I will focus on the emphatic variant of ku co-occurring with anti-specific wh-indeterminates (i.e., Free Choice Items, Negative Polarity Items, Referential Vagueness Items), which has generally received less attention than the definite one. I suggest that the meaning of ku in this case is not associated with the core property of definiteness. Instead, given the set of empirical data, my proposal is that (i) the hallmark properties of emphatic ku are suggested as a) scalarity, b) additivity, c) weak polarity, and (ii) the pragmatic contribution of the emphatic ku can be characterized in terms of scalar intensifier. The scalar intensifier ku contributes the presupposition that there is a set of alternatives of anti-specific wh-indeterminates which is base-α, and that these alternatives are ranked on a scale. Its scalar presupposition denotes the least likely values on the likelihood scale. The implication of my finding leads to the fact that Korean is a language which reveals a dichotomy in encoding distinct type of weak familiarity (i.e., the scalar intensifier ku) and strong familiarity (i.e., the definite ku).