Expressing prediction and epistemicity with Korean -(ul) kes i and Mandarin Chinese hui

31st Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation (PACLIC 31), pages 187–195 Cebu City, Philippines, November 16-18, 2017 Copyright c⃝2017 Eunson Yoo Expressing prediction and epistemicity with Korean ‐(u)l kes-i and Mandarin Chinese hui Eunson Yoo Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Sun Yat-sen University 135West Xingang RD., Guangzhou 510275, P.R. China eunsun77@hotmail.com Abstract Due to the non-factual nature of futurity, there is an ongoing ambiguity between modality and futurity. The same ambiguity persists in Korean ‐(u)l kes-i and Mandarin Chinese hui that both express an estimation of the likelihood that the state of affairs will be realized in the world, involving the speaker’s conjecture. A conjecture can be a statement expressing a prediction about what might happen or an epistemic assumption that draws a conclusion about the past and current course of events. This paper aims to show that ‐(u)l kes-i can express both prediction and epistemicity whereas the use of hui is limited to prediction. The present paper argues that ‐ (u)l kes-i encodes the reasoning process which can be reversible from cause to consequence and consequence to cause, whereas hui encodes linkage between events in a forward direction whereby cause precedes consequence. Keywords: ‐(u)l kes-i, hui, conjecture, prediction, epistemicity, cause, consequence 1 ‐(u)l kes‐i is a combination of an adnominal form -(u)l and the pronominal kes ‘thing’ and the copula i ‘be’. 2 A reviewer made a comment that instead of -(u)l kes-i as a modal auxiliary, the meanings of prediction and epistemicity can better be attributed to the adnominal ending -(u)l as opposed to -(nu)n. There has been an approach to dividing -(u)l and -(nu)n as irrealis and realis markers, which involves the concept of modality and defines them as modal markers. However, there is an ongoing debate over the usage of -(u)l. Pak (2009) argues that -(u)l still requires a periphrastic construction such as -(u)l kes kath to fully express the speaker’s 1 Introduction Commonly, ‐(u)l kes‐i and hui both encode prediction based on the speaker’s observation. In Korean, ‐(u)l kes‐i, which is based on a periphrastic construction, 1 is explained by Kim (1987) as expressing the speaker’s volition or supposition and is used for both a definite future and a probable present or past. In addition, the adnominal ending - (u)l adds uncertainty as it indicates that an event has not yet occurred. 2 (1) kkamakwi-ka wul-ko iss-ta crow-Nom cry-Con exist-Dec mwen-ka pwulkilha-n il-i something-Nom be:ominous-Adn thing-Nom ilena-l kes-i-ta happen-Adn thing-Cop-Dec ‘A crow is crying. Something bad will happen’. 3 (Kim 2012:39) conjecture. Lim (2008) defines ‐(u)l kes‐i as an epistemic modal that draws a conclusion based on common knowledge. Given this, this paper defines -(u)l kes-i as a modal marker instead of a modal auxiliary. 3 Abbreviations used in this paper: Acc (accusative), Adn (adnominal), Cl (classifier), Cop (copula), Comp (complementizer), Con (Connective), Dec (declarative), Ind (indicative morpheme), Nom (nominative), Nmlz (nominalization), Prs (present), Pst (past), Part (particle), Sfp (sentence-final particle), Top (topic) 187 In Mandarin Chinese, with no morphological tenses, it …

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