-다가의 의미 확대

Abstract

In this paper, we try to show the process of semantic expansion of the connective ending -daga in Korean. We hypothesize that -daga originally meant diversion of a course of discourse, from which three other meanings of causal relation', conditional relation' and enumeration are derived. The processes of semantic derivation are believed to be as following.: (a) diversion → causal relation → conditional relation (b) diversion → enumeration The ending -daga and the topic marker nun are often combined to represent conditional relation. This combination is, however, affected by the strength of two semantic factors, that is, condition and conjecture. As the degrees of condition and conjecture are stronger, -daga and nun can be combined more easily. For this reason, one of the strongest condition, a counter-factual one, is always represented by the restructured ending -daganun.