On Grammatical Quotatives - A Study on the Variance in Which Communicative Modal Context Dictates Grammatical Expressives in the Korean Language

This paper reveals a new understanding of the function that Korean quotative expressions perform in a spoken communicative context in contrast to what will described as the functions employed in a purely grammatical or written form. It will be seen if the Korean language allows for quotative expressions to be utilized dependent upon contextual situations.The need for a contextual grammar is raised through an examination of the semi-spoken language corpus. Upon this foundation, the author presents a framework for analysis of a corpus-based approach. This corpus here utilized is a sample, a dataset compromising approximately one million lines of script, of grammatical quotative expressions compiled from a number of Korean television miniseries (Korean ‘drama’) programs. It is hoped that the analysis of the data allows for in depth analysis and conclusive definition of the influence the contextual elements of purpose, register, and speaker-listener relationships have on the merits or shortcomings of ‘grammar in context’.