This paper aims to analyze the functions and characteristics of ‘ne/ye’ in news interviews, with specific focus on the neutrality and ambiguity of ‘ne/ye’ used by interviewers. In respect of its distribution, the interviewers used ‘ne/ye’ in the middle of the interviewees’ turn or after the interviewees completed a sentence. On the other hand, with regard to its functions, ‘ne/ye’ coming after the interviewees' completed sentences functioned as a continuer or an indicator of the interviewers' turn, while ‘ne/ye’ in the middle of the interviewees’ turn always functioned as a continuer. When used by interviewers, ‘ne/ye’ appeared ambiguous in its functions, given that ‘ne/ye’ was used consistently in the opening, Q&A sequences, and closing by the interviewers, and that ‘ne/ye’ could be used and interpreted as either a continuer or an indicator of the interviewers' turn. Based on the ambiguity of ‘ne/ye’, this paper concludes that both the interviewers and interviewees could keep interacting with each other by comprehending ‘ne/ye’ as a sign of turn-taking, thus enabling the interviewers to sustain neutrality throughout the entire talk and naturally allowing them to be loyal to their task of obtaining sufficient information from the interviewees to convey to the audience.

Im Sun-hee and Kim Sun-hoi. 2014. A study on the discourse marker functions of “ye/ne” in Korean through analyzing the Sejong Corpus. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 22(1). The expressions called discourse markers universally have three shared features, that is, connectivity, optionality, and non-truth-conditionality (Schourup 1999). Kim (1989), Lee (1993), and Kang (2009) have shown that the expressions “ye/ne” in Korean have the propositional meaning in some cases, but exhibit these features in other cases. Based on these previous studies, where the various functions of “ye/ne” were classified, this paper investigates, focusing on their discourse marker functions, the function-based frequencies of “ye/ne” occurring in the spoken component of the Sejong Corpus. From this investigation, the following results are derived: First, “ye/ne” is used much more frequently as a discourse marker than as a propositional meaning form, second, their most frequently used function is a back-chaneling one, and last but not least, “ye/ne” is also used within a speaker’s turn very frequently and “ye/ne” in these cases is not used for responding to another's utteran