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영어

The aim of this study was to investigate the concept and scope of Korean conditional imperatives and provide a comprehensive examination of the category. In Chapter 2, I argued for the usefulness of explaining conditional imperatives through a prototype theoretical approach. Conditional imperatives were defined as a broad concept of 'Imperatives interpreted in the sense of a condition or assumption.' Chapter 3 delved into a meticulous exploration of the process through which conditional imperatives acquired the meaning of a condition. We have shown that the 'then' implication arises from the relationship between the conditional and the subsequent sentence, and that the high frequency of this construction has led to the conventionality of the implication and the regularization of the interpretation of the condition. Furthermore, it was revealed that conditional sentences represent the "background circumstances that enable the speaker's subsequent actions or judgments contained in the subsequent sentence." By uttering a conditional imperatives, the speaker prompts the hearer to assume the content of the proposition, which has the effect of strongly expressing the speaker's conviction or commitment. This research sheds light on the specific features of Korean conditional imperatives as a linguistic phenomenon wherein the form of a command conveys the meaning of a condition. Although this study focused solely on Korean, further meticulous investigations are warranted to examine the commonalities and divergences between conditional imperatives in other languages, with the goal of uncovering universal principles underlying conditional imperatives worldwide.