Tense or aspect: The speaker's communicative goals and concerns as determinant, with reference to the Anterior - ŏss- in Korean

Abstract

There has been much controversy over the semantic characteristics and grammatical nature of the suffix - ŏss - in Korean, whether it is a past tense marker, a perfective aspect marker, or a perfect marker. An investigation of colloquial discourse in Korean shows that it is the speaker's communicative goals and concerns that determine whether the suffix gives a past tense, perfective aspect, or perfect interpretation in a given discourse context. Each contextual interpretation is derived from an invariant grammatical meaning ‘anterior’, a temporal notion that is neutral with regard to whether it involves tense or aspect. Which of these interpretations prevails in a given context depends on whether the speaker is concerned with the location of the situation described with respect to a reference point, or with the location of the reference point with respect to various temporal phases of the situation.