A bias-driven modal development of evidentiality: the Korean inferential evidential –po

Abstract

This paper aims at analyzing the peculiar morphology and semantics of Korean inferential evidential expressions like ca-na-po-ta ‘(he) seems to be sleeping’ in an integrated manner, with a claim that it contains a self-addressed interrogative morpheme. From a diachronic perspective, the paper proposes that the emergence of the inferential marker is bias-driven, arguing that an inherent bias in a self-addressed question constitutes a necessary condition for later development. And the bias, which is undoubtedly of an epistemic nature, is reinterpreted as inferential evidentiality with the addition of the previously perceptual morpheme –po-. On a synchronic side, capitalizing on the fact that –kka is another self-addressed interrogative morpheme alongside with –na and –ka, the present work claims that this morpheme can also make an inferential evidential marker, i.e., -kka-po-, which is always preceded by a prospective morpheme –l-. It is demonstrated that apparent semantic differences between the kka-variant and the other two variants are better understood as sortal contrasts, since the predictive future is the converse of the inferential past (Nichols, in: Chafe, Nichols (eds) Evidentiality: the linguistic coding of epistemology, Ablex, Norwood, 1986).