Buddhist Texts written in Chinese are important data not only for studies of Buddhist texts but also for studies regarding the history of the Chinese language. Seonmun Yeomsongjip (hereafter SMYSJ), a book compiled by monk Hyesim during the Goryeo era, is the oldest and largest Buddhist scriptures in the nation and has always been one of the must-reads in the Buddhist community. This Zen dialogue-type SMYSJ which details quotations by founders of religious sects has many interrogative sentences. From such an aspect, this book is highly valued as precious data for studying colloquial words during the Song Dynasty. However, there have not been many linguistic studies with regard to this text. Considering that there are plenty of interrogative sentences in SMYSJ, for this study, efforts were made to understand the patterns of development of interrogative sentences based on an analysis of the kinds, types, and frequency of interrogative sentences that appear in the book. Based on this kind of analysis, interrogative sentences appearing in SMYSJ can be divided into six categories. The ‘何’ category, which has the largest number of lower types and is used the most frequently, has been used in the forms of 如何, 云何, 若何, 何物, 何者, 何等, 何处, 何方, 何所, 何在, 何人, 何故, 何以故, 因何, 何以, 以何, 作何, 何似生, 何时, and 如何 has enjoyed the highest frequency of use. The ‘什么’ category of the second-highest frequency of use contains the forms of 什麼, 什麼生, 什麼处, 什处, 什麼人, 什麼时, 什摩时节, 作什麼, followed by the ‘怎么’ category to which the forms of 作麼, 作麼生, 作生, 怎生 belong. An interrogative pronoun of the fourth-highest frequency of use is the ‘怎么’ category to which the forms of 作麼, 作麼生, 作生, 怎生 belong, followed by the ‘那’ category with just three forms of 那箇, 阿那箇, 阿那个, and the ‘几’ category with 幾箇, 幾何, 多小, 大小. In the ‘几’ category, 大小 appeared most. Regarding the study on the usage of interrogatives, those interrogatives for asking men, things and places were connected by type and their semantic functions were analyzed. According to the analysis, each type had very different forms of expression, but there were significant differences in terms of frequency. Regardless of types, most of the interrogatives appearing in SMYSJ were used in interrogative sentences. A considerable proportion of them, of course, were used for rhetorical questions but some of them were used for directing. In conclusion, regarding interrogatives appearing in SMYSJ, expressions used for colloquial words during the Song Dynasty appeared, but some types of usage during this period did not appear. Considering these aspects, interrogatives appearing in SMYSJ did not have the complete features of the modern version of the spoken language.

This study aims to explore the forms of negative yes/no interrogatives and the social actions they perform in task-oriented conversations in Korean and English. The data consist of 20 Korean and 22 English pairs interacting with each other whiJe arranging a series of 15 pictures. It seems that negative yes/no interrogatives are used more extensively in Korean conversation than in English, and that they have different interactionaJ functions in the two languages. AnaJyses of the data suggest that negative yes/no interrogatives in English are used to perform a very specific function in interaction, making an assertion in a disaligning situation while seeking agreement from the addressee. On the other hand, it is shown that negative yes/no interrogatives in Korean are used as an important interactionaJ device between conversationalists. It seems that the ch미ce of the two types of negative yes/no interrogatives in Korean is largely dependent on the speaker’s estimation of the following two factors: (a) the degree of certainty about the information conveyed, and (b) the degree of common ground with the addressee. (Hanyang University, 마1san)

The present experimental study explores developmental characteristics of Korean EFL learners’ English negatives and yes-no interrogatives. Adopting the functional category acquisition framework within the UG theory, this study investigated 12 elementary and secondary school students’ interlanguage grammar by elicited production. The results showed that the learners’ interlanguage grammar developed gradually from VP to IP and CP structures in English negatives. However, their interlanguage grammar did not show gradual developmental tendency in yes-no interrogatives. The acquisition rate of negatives generally increased with the learners’ level whereas there existed individual variation in the acquisition rate and developmental aspect of yes-no interrogatives. This result suggests that CP structures instantiated by yes-no interrogatives seem to be acquired from the initial stage by some learners.

The present study aims to investigate the effects of the intonations on the syntactic interpretation of the interrogatives with a wh-expression in the Daegu-North Gyeongsang Korean and the Seoul metropolitan Korean. To this end, it analyzes the syntactic and prosodic structures of the interrogatives with an embedded wh-clause or a yes/no-question with an indefinite pronoun. Two types of perception tests, one with unmodified intonations and the other with transplanted intonations, were carried out to analyze the respondents’ interpretations of the three types of the interrogatives. The results of the test with unmodified intonations were as follows. First, more than 90% of the respondents chose appropriate answers to the three types of the wh-interrogatives with no statistically significant differences. Second, the respondents’ reaction times demonstrated with statistically significant differences that the processing load of wh-questions with matrix scope was heavier than that of wh questions with narrow scope or yes-no questions with an indefinite pronoun. Third, embedding verbs of the question-selecting predicate class such as gunggeumhada ‘wonder’ led to longer reaction time than those of the proposition-selecting predicate class such as saenggakada ‘think’. In addition, the results of the perception test with transplanted prosodies revealed two decisive factors. First, the interrogative-endings -ka/na were more influential factors in the respondents’ syntactic interpretations of wh-questions than the other endings such as –ko/no or the prosodies were. Second, wh-questions with such embedding verbs as saenggakada ‘think’ were interpreted in close accordance with the transplanted prosodic structures, but not so much so in the case of wh-questions with such embedding verbs as gunggeumhada ‘wonder’ irrespective of the prosody transplants.

This study deals with the discourse functions of the response particles in a split interrogative (hereinafter, SI), thereby contributing to effectively identifying the characteristics of the tag part in SI. I provide a piece of evidence, through the corpus data, that the tag part must be a non-wh-question and essentially functions as a biased polar question. The data tell us that the interlocutors can choose whether to use the SI or a regular question. Through the data that the speakers select a regular question, this paper tries to provide the evidence. In the process of analyzing their functions in SI, this study demonstrates that these particles must have a referential scope in picking up their antecedents in the previous question: a wide or narrow scope in referring to their antecedents. This characteristic leads us to identify the biased property of the tag question, therefore arguing that this tag must be a biased polar question. In the course of these works, we figured out that the addressees apparently take three strategies to respond to the split interrogative: to respond only the wh-question, the tag part, or both.

Interrogative sentences can reveal not only questions but also various pragmatic meanings such as conjecture, doubt, confirmation, request, command, irony, emphasis, and admiration, etc. in the usual communication. They are commonly used as a syntactic down-grader in order to prevent pragmalinguistic failures and also reinforce the effect of utterance in communication The Indirect Speech Acts of Korean interrogatives are studied in this paper. In particular, the nature of semantics of interrogatives, the correlation of interrogatives and epistemic modality, the subclassification of its' semantics, and also, the conception of Indirect Speech Acts, the discourse function of interrogatives were included in this paper based on a critical analysis on the previous studies. He semantics of interrogatives are context-depended. So future studies about the correlation of pragmatic factors and the specific expressions of languages will be continued.

Interrogative is a type of sentences that conveys a question for people in the process of recognizing the world. Interrogative sentences can reveal not only questions but also various pragmatic meanings such as conjecture, doubt, confirmation, request, command, irony, emphasis, and admiration, etc. The usage patterns of Directive Speech Acts of Korean Interrogatives are studied in this paper. They are commonly used as a syntactic down-grader in order to prevent pragmalinguistic failures and reinforce the effect of utterance in communication. In this research, the aspects of the usage of Directive Speech Acts of Korean Interrogatives by Chinese Korean learner are investigated by methods of Discourse Completion Tests(DCT) and Follow-Up Interview. According to the results comparing between Korean native speaker and Chinese intermediate and advanced Korean learner, we can draw a conclusion that the native speakers use the indirect directive functions of interrogatives actively in order to express their intention effectively and exert the illocutionary force while the Chinese speakers can not use them appropriately.

Yong-Suk. 1999. Syntax of Wh-Interrogatives: A Minimalist Perspective. Studies in Modern Grammar16, 39-88. This paper argues for two kinds of minimalist proposals concerning the constructions of wh-interrogatives: (i) the computational system of human language (C_(HL)) guarantees the same LF forms for wh-interrogatives of natural languages in accordance with the minimalist principle of poverty of interface interpretation, and (ii) the mechanism of unselective binding must be embodied as an LF principle for the scope-interpretation of wh-in-situ`s in multiple wh-interrogatives. The argumentation here proves that, for wh-interrogatives in English and Korean, the minimalist version of Kim`s (1988, 1990) LF uniformity hypothesis, proposed in this paper, must be adopted against such competing analyses as are suggested by Chomsky (1981, 1980, 1995), Huang (1982), Pesetsky (1982, 1984, 1987), Lasnik & Saito (1984), May (1985), Aoun (1985, 1986), Nishigauchi (1986), Choe (1987) and Watanabe (1992, 1993) among others, implying, from the perspective of minimalist assumptions, that the Q-.feature in C is virtually [-interpretable] at LF in all natural languages.