Grammaticalization and Stance-taking of the Sentential Ending keya in Korean

Abstract

This article aims to address grammaticalization pathways and stance-taking of the sentential ending keya in Korean. Keya (ke+ya), the nonhonorific form of kesipnita, derived from kesiya through s-deletion and i (copular)-deletion. Its starting point of grammaticalization is kes. Kes involves reference to the pronominal (i.e., things), the nominalizer (i.e., events), and the sentential nominalizer (i.e., proposition) through the mechanism of generalization. Kes absorbs the sentence force of -ya (semantic absorption). Therefore, keya is used in declaratives, exclamatives, interrogatives, and imperatives with prosody involved. Keya is more affixalized, agglutinated and fused than kesiya based on the usage comparison of ke and kes. Its morpho-syntactic and functional developments affect its stance-taking. This paper displays evolutional track of stance-taking of keya involved with the sentence force. Finally stance-takings induced by sentence force are broken into three categories of stance: attitudinal, epistemic, and emotional based on Rhee (2011a). This study is theoretically in accordance with Givon (1979: 209): yesterday’s syntax is today’s morphology.