Grammaticalization of causatives and passives and their recent development into stance markers in Korean

Abstract

This paper reports a unique state of affairs of "causatives" and "passives" in Korean. The two grammatical notions have long remained unstable due to the fact that certain morphological causatives and passives are formally identical and that these two no-tions are conceptually closely related. The paper also analyzes the processes involved in their development by tracing their paths to Middle Korean. In addition, it describes their recent change in Modern Korean, which has further complicated their usage, i.e. some of them have acquired an extended function as markers of the speaker’s attenuative stance to show politeness. This extension is motivated at the conceptual level by the demotion of agent to promote humility and the functional reinterpretation of existing forms; and, furthermore, at the socio-cultural level by political influence and language contact, among others. The current paper argues that this development involves diverse participating factors, i.e. discursive strategies, subjectification, inter-subjectification, and functional extension, and that linguistic variability may persevere over a long period of time.