The Role of Subjectivity in the Grammaticalization of Korean Ice

Abstract

This paper investigates the role of subjectification and intersubjectification in how meaning changes over time, and examines how they are instantiated in the grammaticalization of the Korean temporal adverb ice 'now' into a discourse marker. Based on 18 modern Korean spoken corpora, which amount to about 100,000 words, we argue that the deictic adverb ice grounded in the speaker's temporal position has developed into an epistemic discourse marker. The non-temporal functions of ice found in the corpora and discussed in the literature include contrast marking, topic introduction/shift, attention getting, foregrounding of the following information/ event, elaboration or progression of the previous information/event, hedging, and so on. We claim that its various synchronic functions are not arbitrary, but coherently related to one another, accounted for in terms of subjectification and ultimately intersubjectification.