earticle

영어

The current study aims to explicate the relationship of the focus value of the Korean restrictive focus particle -na and its alternative(s), by examining diverse discourse examples from movies. The study critically reviews previous studies which required the focus value to be placed at the lower bound of a pragmatic scale or assumed its propositional alternative(s) to be false. These conditions on restrictive -na are found to be too strong, and the approaches that have these conditions as part of the particle’s meaning are shown to be inadequate in accounting for certain data. It is claimed that the particle requires the presence of an alternative to its focus value and that it ranks its focus value below the alternative on a pragmatic scale. Given the standard classification of focus particles into additive and exclusive ones, these findings suggest that the Korean particle does not belong to either group and is better characterized as a contrastive particle.