The way of truth: The case of the Korean discourse marker cincca in comparison with Chinese zhenshi and zhende

Abstract

Korean has a number of discourse markers (DMs) of Chinese origin, which carry similar and different functions as compared to Chinese source lexemes. Despite their significance, they have not received much attention, hence the rationale of the present study. The goal of the study is to compare DMs of the same origin in Korean and Chinese to identify similarities and differences, based on the data taken from historical and contemporary sources. The Korean DM cincca ‘a true thing’, composed of cin ‘tru(th)’ and the nominalizer cca ‘thing, person’, presents an interesting grammaticalization scenario into diverse discourse functions. The findings demonstrate that in addition to its original nominal function, the DM also carries an adjectival function of adding genuineness or excellence in quality to a modified noun or an adverbial function of adding emphasis to an adjective or a predicate. From this intensifying function there arise diverse DM functions through the interaction of the source meaning of ‘truthfulness’ and diverse inferences from the discourse contexts. The Chinese DMs involving the same etymon are zhende (from zhen ‘true’ and de ‘NOMINALIZER’) and zhenshi (from zhen ‘true’ and shi ‘be so’). The functions of these two DMs are similar to those of the Korean cincca, but the Chinese DM zhenshi is negatively-biased by marking the speaker’s negative evaluation of the referenced person or event. An exploration on grammaticalization processes and functions in the two languages reveals much commonality but some differences in terms of functional distribution, prosody, and the extent of desemanticization.