The connective -ketun, meaning 'if' (Lee 1993), is also used as a sentence-final particle with which the speaker asserts the information not shared by the interlocutor. On the basis of the examination of naturally occurring Korean conversations, this ...
The connective -ketun, meaning 'if' (Lee 1993), is also used as a sentence-final particle with which the speaker asserts the information not shared by the interlocutor. On the basis of the examination of naturally occurring Korean conversations, this paper explicates the sentence-final use of -ketun in terms of its sequential import (Heritage 1984), especially with reference to how the speaker's strong epistemic right indexed by -ketun is "sequentially" mitigated. In explicating the sequential import of deploying -ketun, the methodology of conversation analysis is used (Sacks et al. 1974), with the analytic effort being made to illuminate the nature of the actions constituted by -ketun from the perspective of the participants. Containing information that belongs to the speaker, the ketun-utterance presents an 'undisputable' empirical ground (e.g., in the form of a fact or a first-hand experience putatively 'owned' by the speaker). Pronounced with a range of rising, continuing, or falling intonation, -ketun prods the interlocutor to take the account it constitutes as news whose upshot is to be actively inferred by the hearer. This feature of -ketun, while generating an informing sequence (i.e. adjacency pair of informing-news receipt) at the local level, furnishes the speaker with a means of formulating an 'account' by which the speaker implements a variety of social actions, such as counter-informing, pre-telling, or tightening the argument (Park 1998) (e.g. in the form of a parenthetical insert (Schegloff 2007)). What accords -ketun such a strong sense of social control is clearly the nature of the information it formulates as 'news' about which the speaker can claim strong epistemic rights. In this respect, a ketun-utterance, as a second pair part of an adjacency pair, often constitutes a dispreferred response in such a way that the relevance conditioned by the first pair part is resisted on the basis of the proposed newsworthiness, often with the consequence that the speaker pre-empts any subsequent negotiation. In many contexts, the pre-emptive effect that -ketun has on the addressee (in terms of positioning him/her as a collaborative recipient of news) is sequentially mitigated by way of being embedded as part of pre- or post-sequences (or insert sequences). For instance, in the 'first' position, e.g., as a first pair part of an adjacency pair positioned at the first topic slot, the news framed by -ketun may constitute an account produced as a pre-sequence, which projects a sequential trajectory in which the speaker can move on to initiate the main action (e.g., request), often prefaced by a resumption marker such as kulayse or kulaykaciko 'so.' The ketun-marked account, in both first and second positions, is produced as one that is unsolicited but crucially informative in managing sequential order. In this respect, -ketun is distinct from other types of account formulated with different connectives/suffixes such as -nikka (REASON) or -canha (COMMITTAL), which give prominence to the participants' shared perspective (Park 1998, Kim & Suh 1994), or -nuntey (CIRCUMSTANTIAL), which tends to position the interlocutor as the primary speaker by way of subduing any newsworthy feature of the information it frames. The interactional feature of -ketun as the sentence-final particle is shown to be in line with the 'arrangement-making' meaning associated with its use as a connective (i.e. CORRELATIVE) (with the meaning of 'if'), with the ketun-marked clause serving as a basis for an imperative or hortative (constituted by the main clause) by which the speaker's point is formulated as an instruction to be followed by the interlocutor (Example: "If your head hurts again ketun, please come.") (Lee 1993). The findings, grounded on empirical analysis, are shown to have significant pedagogical implications for materials development, particularly in terms of the need to reflect "authentic" language in language teaching materials.