earticle

영어

This study examines the middle Korean modality marker ‘–Rireo-’, redefining it not as a mere tense marker but as a grammatical indicator of logical certainty. While previous research has primarily interpreted ‘–Rireo-’ within the framework of retrospective future or counterfactual conditionals, this study argues that it more accurately expresses logical certainty based on prior epistemic evaluation. A comparative analysis with ‘-Rieo-’ reveals that whereas ‘-Rieo-’ encodes immediate speaker certainty, ‘-Rireo-’ marks inferred certainty grounded in earlier recognition. By establishing ‘-Rireo-’ as a marker of logical certainty, this study contributes to a more refined typology of modal expressions in the historical grammar of Korean.