-Un/Nun as an Unratified Topic Marker in Korean

Abstract

The marker -un/nun which has been one of the most frequently discussed topics in Korean linguistics, is reanalyzed in this paper. This paper first introduces the well-known division of contrastive and non-contrastive un/nun-marked topics, and questions why contrastive topics and non-contrastive topics share the common morphological marking. Then, based on the classification of topics into ratified and unratified topics which is proposed by Lambrecht & Michaelis (1998), it suggests a unified account of -un/nun that can cover both contrastive and non-contrastive cases According to Lambrecht & Michaelis (1998), topics are ratified when their topic role is assumed to be taken for granted by an addressee at utterance time, and they are unratified when their topic role is not assumed to be taken for granted by an addressee. And they show that English and French adopt different formal markings for their ratified and unratified topics. After presenting a few examples of Korean ratified topics, which show that Korean uses zero pronouns or unaccented bare NPs for its ratified topics, this paper introduces four cases of un/ ηun-marked topics and examines their discourse contexts, and it is shown that all of the four cases belong to unratified topics in Korean. In other words, the four cases of un/nun-marked topics show that the function of -un/nun in the discourse is marking the unratified status of a topic to which it attaches.