Utterance-final -ketun in spoken Korean: A particle for managing information structure in discourse

• -Ketun manages the information flow in the discourse in spoken Korean.
• -Ketun construes a pragmatic assertion as a pragmatic presupposition.
• It explicitly signals the speaker's attention to the hearer's state of knowledge.
• Its basic function can be extended for use in politeness/impoliteness strategies.

This paper explores the functions of the utterance-final particle -ketun in Modern Spoken Korean. In it, I analyze naturally occurring spontaneous conversational data to provide a unified account of utterance-final -ketun's several apparently disparate functions, arguing that its basic function is to manage the flow of information in discourse. Specifically, I claim that -ketun presents a pragmatic assertion that, in the speaker's view, should be or should have been a pragmatic presupposition, as if it were a pragmatic presupposition. The data analyzed in this study suggest that -ketun is a useful device by which speakers can ease the disorderly flow of information in spontaneous conversations, in particular to repair or avoid potential hitches in the order of presentation. This basic information-management function can be extended to highlight or manage mismatches between the speaker's and the hearer's states of knowledge, as part of either politeness strategies or impoliteness strategies. Collectively, the usages of -ketun discussed in this paper suggest that it is a highly intersubjective marker, in that it reflects the speaker's attention to the hearer's state of knowledge and changes in that state of knowledge.