“I know you are not, but if you were asking me”: On emergence of discourse markers of topic presentation from hypothetical questions

• This paper analyzes grammaticalization of rhetorical topic presenters (RQ.TPs).
• RQ.TPs originated from rhetorical, hypothetical questions.
• RQ.TPs are templates and mark the micro-level topics.
• RQ.TP grammaticalization is enabled by structure-based analogy.
• RQ.TPs make use of feigned interactivity and intersubjectification.

Korean has a number of grammatical devices to introduce topics into the discourse. Among such markers is a paradigm of periphrastic topic presenters that are built on rhetorical questions, bringing micro-level topics into the discourse. The major strategy involved in the development of these topic presenters is feigning interactivity, whereby the speaker rhetorically asks a hypothetical question on behalf of the addressee and then answers it. This rhetorical question strategy is an intriguing discourse manipulation to create an engaging effect in that what the speaker pursues from the addressee is not a verbal response, i.e. reply, but a cognitive response, i.e. attention. A historical investigation reveals a number of important implications in grammaticalization studies. For instance, the grammaticalization process of these innovative topic markers creates a template-like paradigm of periphrastic constructions that contain slots to be filled in from another grammatical paradigm of interrogative pronouns and adverbs. Furthermore, the historical developmental pattern of the emerging paradigm strongly suggests that the formative process is enabled by analogy. In addition, the directionality of the process is from the domain of discourse, i.e. rhetoric, contra most traditional instances that undergo the process proceeding from lexical domain to grammatical domain.