Jussive clauses in Korean and their not-at-issue meaning
Introduction This paper investigates the expressive meaning of jussive clauses in Korean. We
illustrate that jussive clauses encode information about the speaker-addressee relationship and
show that the nature of this information is expressive in the sense of Potts (2005). We propose to
treat this expressive content of jussive clauses involving semantic computation in the domain of
Haegeman & Hill’s (2013) Speech Act Phrase.
Jussive clauses Korean has five types of sentences: declaratives, interrogatives, promissives,
imperatives, and exhortatives (Suh 1998). Among these, the latter three types are classified as
jussive clauses (Zanuttini et al. 2012), and each type is marked by a designated sentence final
particle. Promissives are marked by -ma as in (1a), imperatives by -la as in (1b), and exhortatives
by -ca as in (1c).
(1)
a.
b.
c.
(Emma-ka)
mommy-NOM
(Inho-ka)
Inho-NOM
(Emma-lang
mommy-with
ka-ma.
go-PROM
ka-la.
go-IMP
Inho-ka) ka-ca.
Inho-NOM go-EXH
‘{I/Mommy} will go.’
(speaker = mommy)
‘{You/Inho} go.’
(addressee = Inho)
‘{Let’s/Mommy and Inho will} go.’
(speaker = mommy)
In the literature (e.g., Zanuttini et al. 2012), it is argued that each jussive particle restricts the
person interpretation of the jussive subjects. Even when the subjects in (1) are overtly realized in
the form of third-person-like DP, they are forced to be interpreted as first person in the context of
promissives as in (1a), second person in the context of imperatives as in (1b), and first person
plural inclusive in the context of exhortatives as in (1c). (2) is proposed as the semantic
denotation of Jussive°by Zanuttini et al. (2012):
(2)
a.
b.
c.
⟦Promissive⟧ = λx : x = speaker(c).[λw . vP(x)(w)]
⟦Imperative⟧ = λx : x = addressee(c).[λw . vP(x)(w)]
⟦Exhortative⟧ = λx : x = speaker(c)⊕addressee(c).[λw . vP(x)(w)]
Puzzle What is of interest to us is the fact that the jussive clauses encode information about the
speaker-addressee relationship. Specifically, the speaker must be at the same level as, or higher
level than the addressee for the sentences in (1) to be felicitous. This observation is supported by
two facts. First, the sentences in (3), if uttered by a student to his/her teacher, are infelicitous
whereas they are felicitous if the relationship is reversed. Second, jussive particles cannot cooccur with the addressee honorific -yo.
(3)
a.
b.
c.
Cip-ey
home-to
Cip-ey
home-to
Cip-ey
home-to
ka-ma./*ka-ma-yo.
go-PROM/go-PROM-ADDRESSEE.HON
ka-la./*ka-la-yo.
go-IMP/go-IMP-ADDRESSEE.HON
ka-ca./*ka-ca-yo.
go-EXH/go-EXH-ADDRESSEE.HON
‘I will go home.’
‘Go home.’
‘Let’s go home.’
The expressive nature of jussive clauses The above observation leads to the conclusion that the
relationship encoded by jussive clauses has something to do with performative honorifics. Given
this, the meaning of jussive clauses under discussion can be said to be expressives. This intuitive
conclusion is in fact supported by the properties of expressives suggested in Potts & Kawahara
(2004) and Potts (2005) which the claimed expressive meaning of jussive clauses shows. To
name a few, the speaker-addressee relationship encoded by jussive particles show the
independence property. The sentence in (4) is ambiguous and thus can be interpreted as any of
jussive clauses depending on the context. What is interesting to us is the fact that unlike (3), (4)
is felicitous when the addressee is superior to the speaker, and the fact that the core meaning of
(3) is not affected. Second, jussive clauses bear the immediacy property. Let us suppose that a
mother utters the sentences in (3) to her children. Such a relationship is clearly indicated by
simply using the jussive particles in (3). Third, the descriptive ineffability property is observed.
The expressive content is not usually expressed by some other means such as paraphrasing; using
relevant particles suffices.
(4)
Cip-ey
home-to
ka-yo.
go-ADDRESSEE.HON
‘I will go home.’ (promissive), ‘Go home.’ (imperative),
or ‘Let’s go home’ (exhortative)
Proposal Given the conclusion that jussive clauses denote expressive content, we propose to
treat the expressive content in terms of multidimensional semantics. That is, jussive particles,
informally speaking, denote that the speaker is superior to or at the same level as the addressee,
in addition to the descriptive or at-issue semantic denotation of jussive particles which restricts
the person interpretation of the jussive subjects given in (2). We further propose that the
expressive content is computed in the domain of Speech Act Phrase (saP/SAP) (see (5) below),
which is argued to convey the discourse information such as the relationship between
interlocutors (Haegeman & Hill 2013). On our account, it is the functional heads of saP/SAP,
rather than jussive particles, that are responsible for computing the expressive content. In (5),
when Jussive°is spelled out as -ma/-la/-ca, sa°/SA°are spelled out as ∅; when sa°/SA°are
spelled out as -yo, Jussive°is spelled out as ∅ (compare (3) and (4)).
(5) [saP Speaker sa°[SAP Addressee SA°[JussiveP Jussive°… (sa = speech act; SA = Speech Act)
Finally, we propose that the relationship is computed from the perspective of the speaker in
promissives, the addressee in imperatives, and both the speaker and the addressee in exhortatives.
Hence, the expressive semantic denotations of sa°and SA°are given in (6).
(6)
a.
b.
⟦sa°⟧ = λx : x = Speaker . x ≥ addressee(c)
⟦SA°⟧ = λx : x = Addressee . x ≤ speaker(c)
(‘a≥b’ means ‘a is superior to or at the
same level as b’)
sa°and SA°respectively take as their semantic arguments the Speaker and the Addressee, and
compute the relationship that each bindee bears to the other interlocutor(s).The semantic
arguments of sa°and SA°are type e since they refer to the speaker and the addressee
respectively. Since sa°and SA°computes the speaker-addressee relationship, which is type ε, we
are conclude that sa°and SA°are type <e, ε> elements.
In the context where (4) is felicitous (i.e., the addressee is superior to the speaker and
thus -yo is used), we can simply reverse the relationships between the speaker and the addressee
in (6).
References Haegeman, L., Hill, V. 2013. The syntacticization of discourse. Syntax and its limits. 370-390.
Oxford University Press. Potts, C. 2005. The Logic of Conventional Implicatures. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. Potts, C. & Kawahara, S. 2004. Japanese honorifics as emotive definite descriptions. In
Unversity of Massachusetts Occasional Papers 30, 129–146. Amherst, MA: GLSA. Suh, C-S. 1996.
Korean Grammar. Seoul: Hanyang University Press. Zanuttini, R., Pak, M., Portner, P. 2012. A syntactic
analysis of interpretive restrictions on imperative, promissive, and exhortative subjects. NLLT 30: 12311274.