Kang, Arum and Jeon, Jieun 2018. On the novel type of subjunctive complementizer
in Korean. Language Information 27, 69-88. The purpose of this paper is to identify
the novel types of subjunctive complementizer nka in Korean. Among the two types
of interrogative complementizer variants of the ordinary interrogative complementizer
ci and the modalized interrogative complementizer nka, we argue that nka is a lexicalized
form of the epistemic subjunctive mood exponent appearing in subordinator C.
Specifically, we show that the semantic function of nka creates epistemic weakening
in subjective doxastic space and expresses speaker/subject’s epistemic uncertainty on
the embedded question. Our claim will be further supported by corpus study by
comparing different types of predicates selecting nka and/or ci. The theoretical
implication of current study is two-folds: First, in Korean, interrogative can be another
prerequisite of subjunctivity. Second, for the analysis of interrogative subjunctive, the
inquisitive-based theory is untenable but nonveridicality can provide the general theory.
Key words: interrogative complementizer, attitude predicates, subjunctive mood, mood
selection, nonveridicality, corpus study