Long-form Negation Questions in Korean and their Two Parses and Speech Acts

Abstract

In this paper we investigate long-form negation questions in Korean, providing an analysis for their two parses and speech acts. Long-form negation questions can be construed as positively-biased or confirmational question tags as well as neutral negative questions. Kim (1981) and Chang (1984) argue that these constructions of the former use correspond to English confirmational or tag questions, but Chang (1986) argue that they correspond to English outer negation polar questions. In this paper we reinforce the former view and adopt Wiltschko’s (2021) so-called Interactional Spine Hypothesis to syntactically represent the Korean question tag construction at issue. Note that the Q-marker –ci or the homomorphic suffix –ci before the question tag an.h-ni serves as a trigger for presupposing a commitment from a speaker concerning the propositional content, we depart from Wiltschko (ibid.) to suggest that the Korean question tag construction at issue has the two recursive interactional spines, giving rise to two speech acts in the construal of this construction.