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Article published In: Korean Linguistics
Vol. 21:2 (2025) ► pp.135–168

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Clause final grounding and metonymy in Korean indirect requests

 | University of Minnesota Duluth
 | Georgia Institute of Technology
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 29 January 2026
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https://doi.org/10.1075/kl.25005.par
Abstract
This article proposes a Cognitive Grammar account of Korean conventional indirect requests and connective behavior. Sentence-ending particles (SEPs) are analyzed as grounding morphology that links clausal content to the speaker–addressee Ground. Clause type provides a default access path to a speech-act scenario, which may be overridden when an SEP profiles a subpart such as desire, ability, obligation, or intention. Mapping before, result, and after phases to Korean morphosyntax predicts the distribution of declaratives, interrogatives, and intention forms. It also accounts for the agent shift of -ulkeyyo in service talk and the preference for grammaticalized endings over periphrastic expressions. We extend the analysis to Sweetser’s domain shifts to show how -umyen, -unikka, -ese, and -ciman alternate across content, epistemic, and speech-act uses under clause-final anchoring. Integrating Panther & Thornburg’s scenario-based metonymy with CG grounding, the study links grammaticalized endings to speaker–hearer interaction in the usage event.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background and theoretical integration
    • 2.1CG and the scenario model
    • 2.2Sweetser’s (1990) domain architecture
    • 2.3A formal syntactic account: Treetop/SAP syntax
  • 3.Cognitive grammar machinery
    • 3.1Usage events, clause structure, and speech-act parings
    • 3.2Putting the pieces together for speech-act analysis
  • 4.Illocutionary scenarios and metonymy
  • 5.Korean conventional indirect requests
    • 5.1Requests: Modality, clause type, and beneficiary
    • 5.2Intention-type endings and agent shift: -ulkey as test case
    • 5.3Connectives across content, epistemic, and speech-act domains
    • 5.4What J. Park gets right, where we differ, and the open issues
  • 6.Analysis: Grounded scenario–to–form mapping in Korean
    • 6.1Grounding with sentence-ending particles
    • 6.2From scenario phases to Korean morphosyntax
    • 6.3Predictions and diagnostics
  • 7.Alternatives
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (46)
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