Speech Act, Evidentiality, and Implicature in the Korean Topic-Construction

Abstract

Is it possible to map pragmatic or discourse-oriented features onto the syntax level? The Korean topic marker -(n)un has a contrastive reading that induces conventional implicature, and is closely associated with a modal morpheme that can be regarded as a kind of agreement with evidentials. This paper attempts to represent such pragmatic features (implicature and evidentiality) as being involved in the topic-construction at the syntax level. To accomplish this, the paper introduces a Speech Act Projection (SAP), whose head encodes illocutionary force, and an Evidentiality Projection (EvidP), which is headed by a modal morpheme or evidential marker. The conventional implicature is mapped by means of the adjunction of a null operator to the EvidP. Finally, this operator movement provides evidence for the unavailability of the marker -(n)un in some clausal types.