Tense, aspect, and modality: A discourse-pragmatic analysis of verbal affixes in Korean from a typological perspective

The goal of this dissertation is to characterize the overall pattern of tense, aspect, and modality categories in Korean by giving a discourse-pragmatic analysis of verbal affixes used in representative colloquial discourse data.; There are two different dimensions of aspect, which must be conceptually distinguished: the totality dimension and the temporal dimension. The totality dimension pertains to whether the speaker views a situation from outside of the event frame (the external view), and thus presents it as a wrapped-up whole, or views it within the event frame (the internal view), and thus presents it as it unfolds as if he or she experiences it concurrently. I show that the external view is morphologically unmarked in Korean, and the internal view is marked with the imperfective -{dollar}n un{dollar}- for non-prior situations and with the Retrospective -{dollar}t o{dollar}- for prior situations.; The temporal dimension pertains to what temporal phase of a situation described is made reference to by the communicators, beginning, middle, or end. Korean manifests the temporal dimension of aspects as well, due to the development of the Anterior -{dollar} oss{dollar}- from the formerly Perfect -{dollar} o iss{dollar}- construction. I propose that the temporal system of Modern Korean is in transition from manifesting a three-way aspectual distinction of the totality dimension to a system that manifests temporal oppositions of the temporal dimension.; Sentence-terminal suffixes used in Colloquial Korean differentiate various epistemic modality categories, conveying assimilated information (information that is part of the speaker's established body of knowledge), unassimilated information, factual realization, and the speaker's belief in the truth of the conveyed information, and informing the hearer of information that has provoked the speaker's consciousness. Sentence-types, e.g. declarative, interrogative, and imperative, are not morphosyntactically coded in the colloquial language.; The findings in this study suggest that experiential components of situations--that is, when, where and how a situation is perceived, and how the perception is integrated into the speaker's cognitive system--play an important role in the grammatical system of a language.