earticle

영어

The purpose of this study is to analyze the discourse function and examine the distinctive characteristics of morpho-syntactic, semantic, and discourse of ‘-(으)ㄹ 수 있다/없다’ which is being taught as an important grammatical item and high in frequency of use by performing diverse discourse functions in various contexts in the four language register. For this purpose, the distribution and detailed characteristics are analyzed in 4 million word corpus consisting of academic prose, newspaper, fiction, and spoken. The main results are as follows. First, the morphological form, the sentence ending form, and the constituent elements in complex component are different from each other by language register when constructing a specific discourse function. Second, various interpretive meanings are derived from the meaning of ‘possibility’ and ‘impossibility’ which is combined with various contextual information related to the characteristics of language register. Third, it is found that the characteristics shared by the field, mode, style of discourse influence the use including preference style by language register.