-tamyen as a Marked Conditional Form for the Rhetorical Effect of Distancing in Korean

Abstract

This paper aims to shed a new light on the functional division of labor between two conditional markers, -myen and -tamyen, in Korean grammar. We observe that -tamyen is infelicitous in the contexts of deictic conditionals and generic conditionals, but favored over -myen to express a specific range of speaker attitudes (i.e., NON-COMMITMENT, DOUBTFUL, and UNREALISTIC IMAGINATION). We argue that the need to evoke the rhetorical effect of distancing explains all and only the felicitous contexts of -tamyen conditionals.