Nominalization and stance marking in Korean

This paper investigates the stance-marking function of nominalizers in Korean. This function is a product of grammaticalization processes whereby the nominalizers acquired special meanings from subjectification and intersubjectification of the interlocutors. Diverse stances are marked by these nominalizer-derived endings. Of the diverse types of stances, epistemic stances, which indicate the proposition’s status with respect to the speaker’s knowledge state, are the most prominent type, including addressee confirmation, approval/suggestion giving, conviction, self-assurance, prediction, conjecture, exclamation, etc. Also widely used are attitudinal stances, which signal the speaker’s attitude toward the addressee, including friendliness, promissive, intention, etc. On the other hand, the category of emotional stances seems to be a minor one as there is only one such stance, i.e. regret.