Overt Subjects Signaling Floor Shifts in Korean Discourse

Lee, Narah

doi:10.30961/lr.2021.57.3.329

Lang. Res. 57(3):329-354

pISSN: 0254-4474, eISSN: 2586-7113

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30961/lr.2021.57.3.329

Article

Overt Subjects Signaling Floor Shifts in Korean Discourse

Narah Lee ¹ ^, ^†

Author Information & Copyright ▼

¹University of Queensland

^†Corresponding Author: E-mail: narah.lee@uq.edu.au

ⓒ Copyright 2021 Language Education Institute, Seoul National University. This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Received: Jul 20, 2021 ; Revised: Aug 23, 2021 ; Accepted: Oct 13, 2021

Published Online: Dec 31, 2021

ABSTRACT

Despite ample literature on the frequent occurrence of subject omission in Korean, the discussion of subjects that are not omitted in utterances has not been fully developed. While some researchers have focused on emphasis and contrast as the main reasons for a subject not to be omitted, the current study addresses floor-shifting in spoken discourse as a primary motivation for a subject to be overt. With respect to shifts of the floor in discourse, I analyze occurrences of overt subjects in spoken Korean corpora and clarify the discursive roles of first- and second-person subjects that are overtly expressed. The analysis shows that overt subjects referring to the interlocutors of discourse function as an explicit sign of the intention to take or give the floor. The findings of this study extend our understanding of overt subjects in Korean by expanding our focus from subject omission in sentences by relating it to the speaker’s stance toward the floor of discourse.

Keywords: floor shift; discourse organization; overt subject; first-person; second- person; spoken Korean

References

Bennett, A. (1981). Interruptions and the interpretation of conversation. Discourse Processes 4, 171-188 .

Benveniste, E. (1971). Problems in general linguistics. In M. E. Meek (Ed.), Coral Gables, Florida: University of Miami Press .

Chae, Y. H. (1998). Tamhwaey ssuinun '-ketun'uy hwayongcek kinung [The discourse modality marker '-ketun' in Korean]. Korean Semantics, 3, 159-177 .

Chang, S. -J. (1996). Korean. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company .

Clancy, P. M. (1996). Referential strategies and the co-construction of argument structure in Korean acquisition. In Barbara Fox (Ed.), Studies in anaphora (pp. 33-68). Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: Benjamins .

Davidson, B. (1996). 'Pragmatic weight' and Spanish subject pronouns: The pragmatic and discourse uses of 'tú' and 'yo' in spoken Madrid Spanish. Journal of Pragmatics, 26(4), 543-565 .

Duncan, S. (1972). Some signals and rules for taking speaking turns in conversations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 23(2), 283-293 .

Edelsky, C. (1981). Who's got the floor? Language in Society, 10(3), 383-421 .

Erickson, F. (1982). Money tree, lasagna bush, salt and pepper: Social construction of topical cohesion in a conversation among Italian-Americans. In D. Tannen (Ed.), Analyzing discourse: Text and talk (pp. 43-70). Washington: Georgetown University Press .

10.

Ewing, M. C. (2014). Motivations for first and second person subject expression and ellipsis in Javanese conversation. Journal of Pragmatics, 63, 48-62 .

11.

Goffman, E. (1955). On face-work: an analysis of ritual elements in social interaction. Psychiatry: Journal for the Study of Interpersonal Processes, 18, 213-231 .

12.

Goffman, E. (1976). Replies and responses. Language in Society, 8, 257-311 .

13.

Goffman, E. (1981). Forms of talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press .

14.

Goldberg, J. A. (1990). Interrupting the discourse on interruptions: An analysis in terms of relationally neutral, power- and rapport-oriented acts. Journal of Pragmatics, 14(6), 883-903 .

15.

Hayashi, R. (1987). A study of floor management of English and Japanese conversation. (Ph.D. dissertation). University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois .

16.

Hayashi, R. (1991). Floor structure of English and Japanese conversation. Journal of Pragmatics, 16, 1-30 .

17.

Hong, J. -S. (2014). User-centered Korean grammar encompassing the spoken and written language (written in Korean). Emwunyenkwu 42(1), 7-35 .

18.

Houtkoop, H., & Harrie M. (1985). Turns and discourse units in everyday conversation. Journal of Pragmatics, 9, 595-619 .

19.

Jung, Y. (2007). Cwue saynglyakey tayhan soko [A note on subject ellipsis]. Journal of Language Sciences 14(2), 101-120 .

20.

Kang, S. -Y. (2017). Tholontamhwaeyseuy mal kkietulkiey tayhan yenkwu [A study on an intervention in CEDA discussion discourses]. Korean Semantics, 58, 89-124 .

21.

Kim, H. (1989). Nominal reference in discourse: Introducing and traking referents in Korean spoken narratives. In S. Kuno (Ed.), Harvard studies in Korean linguistics (Vol. III). Hanshin, Seoul .

22.

Kim, H. (1999). Hankwuke tayhwasangeyseuy hwacawa chengcaey tayhan ciching phyohyen [Referring Expressions for Speaker and Hearer in Korean Conversation]. Discourse and Cognition, 6(1), 73-100 .

23.

Kim, T. (2008). Subject and object markings in conversational Korean. (Ph.D. dissertation). State University of New York at Buffalo, Ann Arbor .

24.

Kim, W. -S. (1996). Supheyineuy cwue saynglyak: hankwuk.e cwue saynglyak.kwauy tayco pwunsekcek kwancemeyse [Subject ellipsis in Spanish: Comparative study with Korean]. Icwungenehakhoyci [Bilingual Research] 13, 267-287 .

25.

Kwon, J. -I. (2012). Hankwuke Mwunpeplon [Theories in Korean Grammar]. Taehaksa, Seoul .

26.

Lee, D. -Y., & Yonezawa, Y. (2008). The role of the overt expression of first and second person subject in Japanese. Journal of Pragmatics 40(4), 733-767 .

27.

Lee, J. C. (2002). Emalemi '-ketun'ey tayhan hwayongloncek yenkwu [A pragmatic study on the final ending '-geodeun']. Korean Language Education 108, 263-282 .

28.

Lee, P. -Y. (1987). Hyentaykwukeuy 1, 2inching phyohyeney tayhaye [On the first and second person references in modern Korean]. Kwanakemwunyenkwu [Kwanak Language and Literature Research], 12, 209-229 .

29.

Lee, W. -P. (1989). Referential choice in Korean discourse: Cognitive and social perspective. (Ph.D. dissertation), University of Southern California, Los Angeles .

30.

Lee, W. -P. (1999). Thokhusyoeyseuy mal kkietulki: tamhwa kinungkwa sahoycek yoin [Interventions in talk shows: Discourse functions and social variables]. Discourse and Cognition, 6(2), 23-59 .

31.

Lim, G. -H. (2001). Kwuke tamhwauy kkietulki yuhyengey tayhan yenkwu [Study of the interruption types in Korean discourse]. The Journal of Linguistics Science, 20, 321-351 .

32.

Nariyama, S. (2004). Subject ellipsis in English. Journal of Pragmatics, 36(2), 237-264 .

33.

Oh, S. -Y. (2007). Overt reference to speaker and recipient in Korean. Discourse Studies, 9(4), 462-492 .

34.

Ono, T., & Thompson, S. A. (2003). Japanese (w)tashi/ore/boku 'I': They're not just pronouns. Cognitive Linguistics, 14(4), 321-347 .

35.

Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language, 50(4), 696-735 .

36.

Schegloff, E. A. (1968). Sequencing in conversational openings. American Anthropologist, 70 (6), 1075-7095 .

37.

Tannen, D. 1987. Repetition in conversation: Toward a poetics of talk. Language, 63(3), 574-605 .

38.

Travis, C. E., & Cacoullos, R. T. (2012). What do subject pronouns do in discourse? Cognitive, mechanical and constructional factors in variation. Cognitive Linguistics, 23(4), 711-748 .

39.

Yngve, V. H. (1970). On getting a word in edgewise. The 6th regional meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 567-578 .

40.

Zheng, W. (2020). The first person singular pronoun topic as attention-getter in interaction: A study of qá mà in Longxi Qiang. Journal of Pragmatics, 156, 1-15 .