The Korean hortative construction revisited

Abstract

Abstract This paper revisits the hortative -ca construction in Korean from a usage-based perspective, examining its functions in natural interactional spoken data The examination of the actual occurrence of -ca reveals its various functions: -ca indicates that the performer of the focal-event encoded in the utterance may be 1st person plural subject, i.e., the speaker and other interlocutors; 2nd person, i.e., the addressee(s); 1st person, i.e., the speaker; and 3rd person. Our findings provide direct evidence for the different degrees of prototypicality among these functions, which are reflected in their different frequency counts. Furthermore, this study proposes two novel functions of ca, the accordant imperative (to demand that the addressee agree with the speaker that the addressee perform the focal-event) and the speaker hortative (to ask the addressee to perform an action so that the speaker him-/herself can perform the focal-event).