The way of truth : The case of the Korean discourse marker cincca in comparison with Chinese zhenshi and zhende

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1. Introduction

Lexemes denoting ‘truth, right’ seem to be among the common sources of discourse markers (DMs). In an extensive lexicon of grammaticalization, Kuteva et al. (2019: 374) exemplify the grammaticalization of DMs that originated from the lexemes denoting ‘right, true, correct’, e.g., English right, German richtig ‘right’, Hebrew naxon ‘right’, Turkish doğru 'right', etc. The lexicon also lists intensive markers developed from the lexemes denoting ‘true, real’, e.g., Archaic Chinese qing ‘truth’, Early Modern Chinese zhen ‘true’, Old French verai ‘tru(ly), truthful(ly)’ (borrowed into Middle English verray, Modern English very), Hungarian igaz ‘true’, igaz-án ‘really’, Baka ko ‘truly, really, completely’, and American Sign Language true (see individual references cited in the lexicon). Since the intensive markers, also commonly called as ‘intensifiers’, closely resemble and are often treated as DMs, the list suggests a widespread grammaticalization of DMs from the lexemes meaning ‘right, real, true, correct’.

Many Asian states have been influenced by China for millennia, due to China’s ‘cultural prestige or attractivity’ (Bisang 2006: 89), and this influence is often clearly visible in language, which is particularly true with Korean. For instance, even though the exact time is unknown, Koreans used Chinese characters or their modified versions to suit Korean, taking the character’s meaning (semantogram) or sound (phonogram), prior to the invention of the Korean script Hangeul (= Hangul, Hankul) in 1443. Identifiably Korean texts written in Chinese characters date back to the 5^th century CE (Whitman 2015). Chinese characters are no longer in common use in Korea, but the Korean lexicon has a large proportion of Sino-Korean words. In Phyocwun Kwuke Taysacen (1999), an authoritative dictionary containing 364,000 head words, 53.2 per cent of the entry is of Chinese origin, mostly nouns. Some of these Sino-Korean words grammaticalized into DMs after they were borrowed into Korean. The morpheme cin ‘tru(th)’ is one such borrowed word, from which the DM cincca was formed in Modern Korean.

Despite its recency in development, the Korean DM cincca presents an interesting grammaticalization scenario. It is a hybrid form consisting of the Sino-Korean bound morpheme cin ‘truth’ and the nominalizer cca ‘thing, person’, thus denoting ‘a true thing’ (see 4.1 for more). A noun phrase in form, cincca, from the early days of its appearance, carries an adjectival function of adding genuineness or excellence in quality to a modified noun (e.g., cincca yayki ‘a true story’, cincca pomwul ‘a genuine treasure’) or of an adverbial function of adding emphasis to an adjective or a predicate (e.g., cincca aphu- ‘be truly painful’, cincca hayngwuni- ‘be truly fortunate’). In Modern Korean cincca displays a wide range of discourse functions. The DM cincca has been studied by Kim and Jeong (2012) and Rhee (2021), but since it was analyzed along with other DMs involving various ‘truth’-related DMs, the analyses were necessarily brief.

Chinese has two DMs that developed from the same etymon zhen (眞) (note the notational variation in zhen and cin), i.e., zhende and zhenshi. These DMs have received attention in a number of studies, e.g., Li (2003), Yan (2006), Chen (2010), Fang (2012), Han (2016), Liu (2021) for zhende and Zhang (2004), Dong (2005), Wang (2010), Li (2011), Guo (2015), Li (2015) for zhenshi. These studies have addressed each DM largely with respect to syntactic and semantic features, not involving comparative or crosslinguistic perspectives. A historical investigation shows that the development of these two DMs is rather recent, i.e., from around the 20^th century, and that their functions have substantial commonalities as well as relatively minor differences with the Korean counterpart (henceforth all these DMs are collectively called ‘the truth-DMs’). This state of affairs presents theoretically significant implications in grammaticalization studies but there has been no research comparing and contrasting these DMs to date. Given this background, this research intends to fill the gap. It aims to compare them and answer the following research questions:

1. how did the truth-DMs in Korean and Chinese develop?
2. what are the similarities and differences between their functions in the two languages?
3. what are the major changes that occurred in the development of these DMs?

The organization of the paper is as follows. Section 2 briefly presents a theoretical background; section 3 explains research methods; section 4 presents discourse functions of Korean DM cincca (in 4.1) and Chinese DMs zhende and zhenshi (in 4.2 and 4.3); section 5 discusses a few issues of theoretical importance, i.e., notable changes (in 5.1), and commonalities and differences (in 5.2); and section 6 summarizes the major findings and concludes the paper.

2. Theoretical background

Languages come into contact with other languages for diverse reasons, and such contact often leads to change. Grammaticalization is a ubiquitous process in the scenes of language contact, which may affect any part of language structure (Heine & Kuteva 2011: 291). In recent linguistic research traditions, the role of language contact in grammaticalization, and, more generally, language change, has attracted the attention of researchers, notably Heine and Kuteva (2005), Adamou and Matras (2020) and Grant (2020). Notable contributions of these studies include identifying the influence of the donor language with respect to the borrowed lexemes’ original semantics, the language’s typological profile, and the limits of the transfer, i.e., borrowability. Furthermore, by comparing the donor and recipient language situations, a better understanding about the contact-induced and evolutive (i.e., language-internal) grammaticalization has been made possible.

3. Data and research methods

DMs arise from an interaction, either real or imagined, in discourse and their functions are highly variable depending on the context they occur in. Therefore, authentic discourse data are of crucial importance in DM research. Also, it is important to have historical data in order to trace the change of the DMs and their earlier forms. For this reason, Korean data are taken from various historical and contemporary resources, including the Sejong Historical Corpus for diachronic investigation, and the Drama Corpus for investigation of contemporary usage. The Sejong Historical Corpus is a 15-million-word, historical section of the Sejong Corpus, developed as part of the government-led 21st Century Sejong Project (1998–2006). The texts in the historical section date from 1446 through 1913. The Drama Corpus is a 24-million-word contemporary corpus, a collection of 7,454 scenarios of dramas and movies dating from 1992 through 2015, compiled by Min Li while she was at Seoul National University (currently at Tsinghua University). UNICONC, a concordance program developed by Jinho Park, was used as a data search engine. The data for analyses of Chinese DMs is taken from the CCL (The Center for Chinese Linguistics at Peking University) online corpus, consisting of 581,794,456 characters, without word segmentation or POS tagging.¹ The data obtained from corpus search are hand screened for identification of their grammatical status and function.

4. Results

4.1. Korean cincca

Korean has a number of truth-related adverbs involving the Sino-Korean morpheme cin ‘tru(th), e.g., cinsillo, cintis (obsolete), cinceng, cincengulo, cincengkho, and cincca. Of these, only cincca functions as a full-fledged truth-DM in contemporary Korean, in view of syntactic behavior and discourse functions, whereas others either carry lexical meanings or are of marginal distribution
(cf. Kim & Jeong 2012, Rhee 2021). The meaning of cin has been extended over time to a great extent, e.g., ‘(religious) truth’ (15^th c.), ‘substance, genuineness, reality (counter-expectation), factuality, extraordinariness’ (15^th c.), ‘sincerity’ (16^th c.), ‘depth, strength, truthfulness, true identity’ (19^th – 20^th c.), etc. (Rhee 2021: 468–469).

The word cincca first occurs as cinsca in a Korean-English bilingual dictionary Hanyengcacen (1897), but dictionaries (e.g., Wulimalsaym and Koesacen) indicate that it is a modern form of the earlier forms, cintis (15^th c. –19^th c.), cincis (15^th c. – 20^th c.), cincit (18^th c.).² It is not clear, however, how the modern cincca and the earlier forms cintis/cincis/cincit are related, especially phonologically. The modern form, cincca, is likely to have developed from a Sino-Korean morphological derivation of cin ‘true’ and ca ‘thing’, of which the last consonant /c/ became tensed to /cc/ for emphasis (see Koo 2009 for discussion of force-dynamic representation of tensed and aspirated sounds).³

The predecessor forms cintis/cincis/cincit had adjectival, adverbial, and nominal functions. They had such meanings as ‘pure’ (e.g., pure gold); ‘truthful’ (e.g., truthful principle); ‘genuine’ (e.g., genuine sap), in the 15^th c. data; ‘truly’ (e.g., truly resembling an army general) in the 17^th c. data; and ‘very’ (e.g., very rich), ‘truth’ (e.g., truth and falsity) in the 18^th c. data. The modern form cincca is a noun phrase in form but from the early days of its appearance, it carried an adjectival function of adding genuineness or excellence in quality to a modified noun (e.g., ‘a true story’, ‘a genuine treasure’), or an adverbial function of adding emphasis to an adjective or a predicate (e.g., ‘truly fortunate’, ‘truly painful’). The modern form, cincca, inherited the semantic features from its predecessors, and from the emphatic adverbial function there arose diverse DM functions through the interaction of the source meaning of truthfulness and diverse inferences from the discourse contexts.

4.1.1. Emphasis (cincca)

Among the primary, and presumably first, DM function is the emphatic function, paraphrasable as ‘I am serious/What I say is true!’, modifying a proposition, whereby the propositional content can carry stronger, emphatic force. The emergence of this function from a lexeme denoting ‘true’ is conceptually straightforward. This usage is exemplified in the following excerpt:⁴

(1)       [Hearing knocks on the 2nd floor window, C is scared and tries to stay in the arms of his father. His older siblings A and B look at him pathetically.]

A: [You are in your father’s arms because you don’t want to study (in your room).]

B: [No doubt. I, too, used to say I had stomachache to avoid studying when I was young.]

C:       아니라니깐요! 진짜 누가 창문을 두드렸다구요!

ani-lanikkan-yo!       cincca       nwuka       changmwun-ul       twutuly-ess-takwu-yo!

be.not-end   -pol       dm       someone:nom       window-acc       knock-pst-end-pol

‘No! DM (= I’m serious!) Someone knocked at the window (and that’s why I am so scared!)’

(2008, Sitcom Khokkili Episode #116)

One interesting aspect of this development is that the ‘truth’ is conceptualized as opposed to non-truth in (deceptive) appearance, whereby the addressee is not yet cognizant of the ‘truth’ and thus the speaker is about to reveal. In other words, in a situation as in (1), the speaker is claiming that the truth (that someone knocked on the 2^nd floor window) is in opposition to the appearance (that such an event is impossible). In this line of thought, the ‘truth’ is often considered as hidden or at least not easily accessible, whose manifestation is considered extraordinary. In the development of the emphasis function, it can be said that the intensifying a property of an entity (as a quality/degree modifying adjective or adverb) in the subjective world has carried over to emphasizing the value of a proposition in the interactional/intersubjective world. From a crosslinguistic perspective, the development of a ‘truth’ lexeme into a pause-filling DM is analogous to the development of the ‘certainty’ lexemes (e.g. actually, really, no doubt, indeed, etc.) into the DMs for pause-filling, as well as uncertainty and mitigation (Aijmer 1986, Čapková 2015).

4.1.2. Discontent (cincca)

The DM cincca has further acquired the emotive function of marking discontent, frustration or even annoyance. This function can be paraphrased as ‘I am unhappy with the situation’ or ‘It’s so frustrating’. The DM used in this function typically occurs stand-alone and often precedes or follows ellipsis. This seems to be closely related to the emphatic function elaborated above since such an utterance is often necessitated by someone or a situation not compatible with the speaker’s ‘true’ intention or desire. However, the DM in this function tends to be not other-directed and thus to occur typically in monologues, i.e., the speaker contains the discontented feelings to themselves. This function is illustrated in the following:

(2)        Frustration cincca (Modern Korean)

       [The speaker runs after his girlfriend, who saw him with a woman. His girlfriend gets in a taxi and goes away before he can stop her.]

A:       선주씨이이         아 진짜...!

       sencwu-ssiii        (taxi drives away; A watches it blankly)        a       cincca...!

       [name]-hon                                                 intj       dm...

       'Sunjoo~! Alas, DM (= it's so frustrating!).'

                              (2007, Drama Talcauy pom Episode #8)

The relationship between ‘truth’ and discontent is rather subtle. The claimed truth is that what the speaker says or feels is ‘truthful’.

4.1.3. Challenge (cincca)

Closely related to the discontent function exemplified above is that of marking challenge, paraphrasable as ‘I am challenging you’, also often occurring in elliptical contexts. Obviously, this is a stronger form of negative emotion than discontent, and its major difference from discontent is that it is other-directed, and thus interactional. As the DM is directed toward the addressee, it is typically spoken in a louder voice than the discontent DM. This function is illustrated by the following excerpt:

(3)        Challenge cincca (Modern Korean)

(A and B are traveling companions without mutual acquaintance. A says he is indebted to B, because B helped him get released from the prison. A wants to be of B’s help in return, but B is a royal envoy incognito, who does not want A to follow him.)

A: [Even beasts know how to pay back for the favor. They pluck their own hair to make warm clothes for their owner.]

B: [(plucking hair from his nostril,) Here’s one. Make a fur jacket with it.]

A: 이 양반이 진짜 보자 보자 하니까...

(in fury)       i       yangpan-i       cincca       po-ca        po-ca        ha-nikka...

       this       fellow-nom       dm       see-hort       see-hort        say-conn

‘(Look at) this fellow DM (= I’m challenging you!) I've been patiently swallowing insult but...’ (Lit. ‘This fellow, while (I've) been saying to myself, ‘let’s wait, let’s wait’,...’)

B: 뭐? 이 양반? 이게 죽을라구 진짜...

(in fury)        mwe?       i       yangpan?       ike-y              cwuk-ullakwu       cincca...

       what?       this       fellow?       this.thing-nom       die-purp        dm

‘What? This fellow? (Look at) this damn fella. (He’s) begging to die, DM (= I'm challenging you!).’

                                                          (2011, Movie Cosen myengthamceng)

In (3) the DM cincca in the challenge function occurs twice. It signals that their offended feeling or their intention of performing a punitive action is ‘true’ and strong.

4.1.4. Surprise (cincca)

The DM cincca has also acquired a neutral or positive function as an interjection-like marker of surprise, paraphrasable as ‘I am surprised’. Unlike the negative functions of discontent and challenge, shown in 4.1.2 and 4.1.3 above, the surprise marked by cincca can be neutral, positive, or negative in nature. The positive and negative surprise is exemplified in the following examples:

(4)        a. Positive surprise cincca (Modern Korean)

(The speaker is impressed by the luxury of the house in which his friend used to live.)

[Is this the house you used to live?]

와~ 너 진짜 좋은 데 살았구나.

wa~       ne       cincca              coh-un              tey              sal-ass-kwuna

intj       you       dm              be.good-adn       place              live-pst-excl

'Wow... you DM (= what a surprise!) lived in a wonderful place!’

(2010, Drama Kutay, wuseyo Episode #6)

b. Negative surprise cincca (Modern Korean)

(A, while interrogating a witness-suspect, coaxes him to confess, promising that he will beprotected by the witness protection laws and that his charges would be exonerated, a promise that he cannot guarantee. A’s supervisor (B) stops him and reprimands him for his reckless promises.)

B: [(How can you act so arbitrarily?) A witness protection might be alright, but do you think exoneration is what you can do?]

A: [What’s important is to make him talk no matter what. Why should I keep my promises?]

B: (dumbstruck)   강민기... 너 진짜...

kangminki...        ne               cincca...

[name]               you               dm

‘Kang Minki... you DM (= How surprising! How can you say that?)’

(2007, Drama Kaywa nuktayuy sikan Episode #10)

The DM carrying the interjective surprise function also tends to occur in elliptical structures, often involving elongated trailing of the last syllable. The ellipsis strongly suggests that the speaker is emotionally overwhelmed and is unable to complete the utterance.

4.1.5. Sudden remembrance (cincca)

Still another function is to mark sudden remembrance or realization, which can be paraphrased as ‘Oh, I almost forgot’ or ‘Oh, that reminds me’. The DM in this function occurs at the left-periphery, and thus prefaces a statement or question that has been nearly forgotten. This is exemplified in the following example:

(5)        Sudden remembrance cincca (Modern Korean)

A: [Why are you so down? What’s the matter?]

B: [No, nothing.]

A: [Tell me. What is it? You look so down. Did he cause trouble?]

B: 아니에요. 진짜... 저기요

       ani-ey-yo.              cincca...       ceki-yo

       be.not-end-pol              dm              dm-pol

       ‘No. DM (= Oh, that reminds me)... well..’

A: [Yes. What is it?]

B: [If a man does not come when a woman’s family invites him, it means that he is not serious about the woman, right?] 

  (2016, Drama 1%-uy etten kes Episode #8)

The surprise function elaborated above (in 4.1.4) is closely related to this sudden remembrance function, because remembering or realizing forgotten ‘truth’ is typically instantaneous and often leads to surprise. For this reason, DMs used for these two functions resemble interjections.

4.1.6. Pause-filling (cincca)

The last function to be elaborated is that of filling a pause. Pause-filling, in general, may be necessitated by the speaker’s need for word search to earn time for formulation of an utterance, which the speaker may either succeed or fail, or by the speaker’s desire to signal that the situation is such that any suitable utterance cannot be found. Thus, the DM cincca carrying the pause-filling function can be paraphrased as ‘I am not yet finished’, or ‘I am speechless’ or rhetorically ‘What can I say?!’ The acquisition of the filler function suggests that the ‘truth’ meaning originally associated with the source lexeme has become significantly bleached, with no discernible semantic vestige in the form. This state of affairs is similar to the English truth-DM actually carrying the filler function (cf. Aijmer 1986). This function of cincca is illustrated in the following:

(6)        Pause-filling cincca (Modern Korean)

a. (A learns that his girlfriend’s (B’s) father remarried. Now in reference to B’s younger stepsister he met the other day:)

B: [So, I live with my stepmother’s daughter, and the girl you met the other day is...]

A: [Aha, I got it. She is the collaborative production of my would-be father-in-law and his new wife!]

B: 아... 진짜...

(siling)       aa...              cincca...

              intj              dm

'Oh, DM (= Well, I don’t know what to say...?!)’

A: 진짜 뭐요?

cincca              mwe-yo?

real                     what-pol

'Real what?’                                       

(2009, Drama Chenmanpen salanghay Episode #22)

b. (Mother (A) is trying to win sympathy from her daughter (B) and son (C) by refusing to eat and feigning to be sick in order to get money from them. B and C know that A is not really sick.)

C: [Mom... (handing A an envelope with money).. Mom... this much is all I can do for you.]

A: (Her eyes twinkling all of a sudden) [uh..?]

C: [My wife does not know this. Just keep that in mind.]

A:       (pretending to be struggling to sit up) [I understand... thank you... I will surely pay it back to you...]

C:       [Now come out of the room ... Eat with us... (and exits the room)]

A: [... OK... I should try to eat for you guys even if I’ve lost appetite...]

B:       ...아우 우리 엄마 진짜...

...        awu        wuli       emma       cincca...

intj        our        mother        dm

‘Oh! Our mother (is) DM (= what can I say?!)’

A: [Me? Me, what?]                       

(2011, Drama Naysalang naykyethey Episode #3)

Note that in (6a) B uses cincca as a DM with vacuous semantic content and A (tauntingly) copies the utterance and uses it as a lexical modifier, a commonly observed pun based on lexical and grammatical meanings of cincca. In (6b), A (the mother) knows that cincca used by B (her daughter) was a pause-filler indicating that she was speechless because of her senseless, childish behavior, but she twists it by pretending that her daughter was looking for words to describe her mother and that she wants to know what they were.

4.2. Chinese zhende

The modern Chinese lexeme zhen (眞, simplified 真)‘tru(th)’ is of a long history, found as early as in Archaic Chinese (also known as Old Chinese,
8^th–3^rd centuries BCE) (see Long et al. 2012). The word is found in a number of truth-adverbs, e.g., zhen ‘tru(th)’, zhende ‘true ptcl, truth of’, zhenshi ‘tru(ly) so’, zhenshide ‘tru(ly) so ptcl, true correctness of’, zhenxin ‘sincere heart’, zhenxinde ‘sincere heart ptcl, sincere heart of’, zhenzheng ‘sincerity’, etc., in which de is a nominalizer.⁵ Of these, zhende and zhenshi (and its variant zhenshide) function as DMs.

The ‘tru(th)’ meaning seems to have been extended to various semantic fields and notably to religious idea of truth or truthfulness. For instance, in one of the oldest dictionaries, Shuowen Jiezi of the 2^nd century, the meaning of zhen is given with the following explanation, strongly suggesting that zhen was related to religious idea of ‘true person’, ‘fairy’, ‘un-worldly man’, ‘hermit’, etc.

(7)        (眞) 僊人變形而登天也。此眞之本義也。

(Zhēn)        xiān        rén        biànxíng     ér        dēngtiān               yě.

(zhen)        true       person        transform and        ascend.to.heaven        ptcl 

Cǐ        zhēn        zhī        běnyì                      yě.

this        zhen        of       original.meaning        ptcl

‘(Zhen) True persons (= immortals) transform into heavens. This is the original meaning of ‘zhen’.’

Despite the long history of zhen, the occurrence of zhen-de, involving zhen ‘tru(th)’, is very rare in old texts: before the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), it occurs only five times in the CCL corpus, with only two of them clearly meaning ‘true’, ‘genuine’. During the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) and the Qing dynasty
(1644–1912), zhen-de occurs as a well-established syntactic construction, meaning ‘true’, ‘genuine’, ‘real’. It is only in the 19^th century that zhende begins to occur as a univerbated adverb denoting ‘in reality’, ‘truly’. Zhende thus diverges into the original lexical use as a noun and the grammaticalized use as a DM. In the latter use, it is now not part of an argument (i.e., of a noun phrase) or a predicate (i.e., of a verb), and thus it is omissible. The following excerpt from the 19^th century exemplifies the adverbial use of zhende.

(8)        Adverbial zhende ‘truly’ (19c)

[My younger brother aspires to study benevolence, righteousness, morality, and self-cultivation. I was very pleased when I read his letter...]

弟弟真的有此志向，要熟读《小学》及《五种遗规》两书。

dìdì               zhēnde        yǒu        cǐ        zhìxiàng,        yào        shúdú

younger.brother        truly        have        this        aspiration        need        peruse

“xiǎoxué”        jí        “wǔzhǒng yíguī”  liǎng        shū

 [book.title]        and        [book.title]        two        book

‘If he truly has such aspirations, he should diligently study the books Xiaoxue and Five Kinds of Yigui.’

 (19c. Zeng Guofan's family letter)

The development into an adverb, notably a sentential adverb, paves a way to the development of DMs (Traugott & Dasher 2002). This is evident in that many DMs across languages carry the dual function of adverbs and DMs, and that DMs, by virtue of not constituting a word class in their own right in traditional grammar, are typically categorized under adverbs. From the adverbial stage, zhende acquires diverse discursive functions.

4.2.1. Emphasis (zhende)

The DM use of zhende is first attested in the 20^th century, often standing alone by gaining positional freedom. Paraphrasable as ‘I’m serious/That’s true!’, the DM zhende emphasizes the content of the foregoing statement, i.e., it is an anaphoric emphasizer. This usage is illustrated in the following excerpts taken from Modern Chinese.

(9)        Emphasis zhende (Modern Chinese)

a. [Li Qin, let me first express my gratitude for your criticism.]

真的！我从报上见到你的文章后，剪了下来，       夹于一本书中，予以保留。

Lǐqín, ràng wǒ yě shǒuxiān duì nǐ de pīpíng biǎoshì gǎnxiè.

Zhēnde!        Wǒ        cóng               bào-shàng         jiàn-dào        nǐ-de        wénzhāng hòu,

dm              I              from              newspaper-on        see-rc              you-gen       article       after

jiǎn-le               xiàlái,        jiā-yú           yì.běn        shū               zhōng,        yǔ            yǐ        bǎoliú.

cut-perf              down       place-in   one-clsf       book              in                     give   to       keep

‘DM (= Really!) After I saw your article in the newspaper, I cut it out and kept it in a book for safekeeping.’

(1996, Writer digest, Newspapers)

b. 她马上回答：“我不会介意的，真的。”

Tā        mǎshàng       huídá:        “Wǒ búhuì       jièyì-de              zhēnde.”

she       immediately       answer          I   will.not       mind-ptcl       dm

‘She immediately responded, “I won’t mind, DM (= really).”’

(1995, Novel, Hóng Píngguǒ, Love of the Red Apple by Yu Qing.)

c. Yang Lan: [But actually, when a person reaches their forties, they start to think about what they really want in life. In the past two years, have you experienced any changes in your mindset?]

 刘德华:       变化了很多年，真的。需要一个自己的家。

Liúdéhuá:        Biànhuà-le         hěnduō      nián, zhēnde. Xūyào  yí-gè             zìjǐ-de       jiā.

change-perf  very.many  year   dm           need    one-clsf  own-gen  home

Andy Lau: ‘There have been many changes over the years, DM (= really).
I realized the need for a family of my own.’

(21c. Yang Lan's Conversation with Prominent Figures:
Yang Lan's Interview Record II, Informal Dialogue)

4.2.2. Preface to noteworthy information (zhende)

The next function, preface to noteworthy information, is similar to emphasis, in that both highlights the importance of the information in the discourse. As the name suggests, however, the function of preface to noteworthy information makes reference to what is to follow, i.e., cataphoric, in contrast with the emphasis function with the anaphoric reference. Thus, the DM in this function can be paraphrased as ‘Let me tell you this’, ‘Listen up’, ‘This is important’, etc. This function is exemplified in the following excerpts.

(10) Preface to noteworthy information zhende (Modern Chinese)

a. [Liu Zhaohua shook the empty cup in his hand. At that moment, Ah Guang and the others were busy taking notes, and no one noticed that he needed water. I got up to pour him some water, and he thanked me.]

然后他不忘推销他的方剂说: “真的，你不信，我在桂林的研制的保健品都是天然的中药配方， 倘若你服用之后，你这个人就像是换了一个人。

Ránhòu tā búwàng tuīxiāo tāde fāngjì shuō:

“Zhēnde, nǐ        búxìn,           wǒ zài guìlín-de             yánzhì-de             bǎojiànpǐn

dm                 you       not.believe       I    in   [place.name]-gen        develop-adn       health.product

dōu        shì        tiānrán-de        zhōngyào                    pèifāng,        tǎngruò        nǐ     fúyòng        zhīhòu,

all       be       natural-adn       Chinese.medicine       formula       if                you  take       after

nǐ        zhège       rén        jiùxiàng        shì       huàn-le                      yí-gè       rén.”

you       this       person       just.like       be       change-perf              one-clsf    person

‘Then, he didn't forget to promote his herbal medicine, saying, “Really (Let me tell you this), it may be hard for you to believe me, but the health products I’ve developed in Guilin are all made from natural traditional Chinese medicine formulas. Once you take them, you’ll feel like a completely different person.”’

(20c. Female Journalist’s Face-to-Face Conversation with Notorious Drug Lord Liu Zhaohua, Informal Dialogue)

b. [The conversation between Song Ailing and Kong Xiangxi did not know where it started, and gradually focused on their views on money. When it comes to money, both of them are very excited, and their faces are red with wine and blood.]

宋蔼龄先说道：“真的，我从小就有这种感觉， 钱这个东西非常奇怪，非常神秘 ……”

Sòng'ǎilíng  xiān shuōdao: “Zhēnde,        wǒ cóngxiǎo            jiù    yǒu  zhèzhǒng   ǎnjué,

[name]           first  say              dm              I    from.young     just  have  this.kind   feeling

qián        zhège          dōngxī   fēicháng  qíguài,     fēicháng       shénmì…”

money       this         thing          very             strange     very       mysterious

‘Song Ailing first said: “DM (= Really), I have had this feeling since I was a child. Money is very strange and mysterious...”

(1998, Complete Biography of the Song Family by Cheng Guang and Ye Si.)

In the excerpts above, the speaker uses the DM zhende to signal that some important information is about to be revealed. To ensure the addressee’s attention, the DM is usually followed by a pause.

4.2.3. Surprise (zhende)

The next function is to mark the speaker’s surprise, and the DM can be paraphrased as ‘I’m surprised!’ Surprise signaled by zhende is value-neutral, thus for both good and bad in nature.⁶ This function is exemplified in the following excerpt:

(11)        Positive surprise zhende (Modern Chinese)

(Song has been distressed because her husband, President of the Republic of China, Chiang Kai-shek, has been very ill, which made her worry that he would die soon. Now, the doctor says he will not die so soon.)

[“Madam, please don't worry. The President's immune system can last at least six months without any issues,” the doctor reassured Soong Mei-ling.]

“真的！如果是这样，我太谢谢你了。”

“Zhēnde!        Rúguǒ shì        zhèyàng,    wǒ        tài        xièxiè        nǐ        le.”

dm              if       be       this            I       great       thank       you       ptcl

“Really! If that's the case, I am so grateful to you.”’

(1998, Complete Biography of the Song Family by Cheng Guang and Ye Si.)

In the excerpt, the speaker, happily surprised by the relieving remarks by the doctor, uses the DM zhende at the receipt of the information. This function is similar to the Korean DM cincca with the function of marking positive surprise in (4a).

(12)        Negative surprise zhende (Modern Chinese)

“真的，无语了，这些人的脑子得坏成什么样才能搞出这么个玩意儿来啊！”

“Zhēnde,        wúyǔ        le,        zhèxiē    rén-de           nǎozi         děi        huài-chéng

dm             no.word    ptcl       these     person-gen  brain        have       bad-rc

shénme    yàng   cái-néng        gǎo-chū       zhème-gè    wányìr        lái         a!”

what         form       then-can       bring-rc       such-clsf   stuff       come       ptcl

‘DM (= Really), I'm speechless. How messed up do these people's brains have to be to come up with something like this!’                     

(2010s\201x\Internet corpus\Weibo\weibo_004)

In (12), similar to (11) above, the DM zhende signals surprise of the speaker, with the notable difference that the signaled surprise is negative in nature.

4.2.4. Preface to upcoming disalignment (zhende)

The last functional category of zhende is to preface an upcoming disalignment, paraphrasable as ‘Well, but...’, which is often used with danshi or keshi (both meaning ‘but’). In other words, the DM signals that the speaker has information that does not align with the interlocutor’s prior statement or expectation. In its discourse function and its lexical semantics, this DM is similar to the English DM actually, which carries the function of prefacing upcoming disalignment. One major difference is that actually itself marks the shift (thus, does not usually occur with but) but the Chinese zhende is normally accompanied by the adversative connective ‘but’. This usage is exemplified below:

(13)        Preface to upcoming disalignment zhende (Modern Chinese)

[“Well,” said Jessop, “now you understand the method of suicide I propose to you. I propose that Mrs. Betterton should go on traveling. And you should be Mrs. Betterton.”]

“但是，真的，”希拉里说，“那将很难做到。...”

“Dànshì, zhēnde,”        xīlālǐ        shuō,       “nà        jiāng        hěnnán              zuò-dào...

 but       dm              [name]       say       that       will       very.hard     do-rc

“But, DM (= actually; well, but),” Hilary said, “that’s going to be hard to do.
[I mean, they’re going to recognize right away that I’m not Mrs. Betterton.]”

(c. 1998, Novel Mùdìdì Bùmíng, trans. of Agatha Christie’s Destination Unknown)

In the excerpt above, the speaker uses the DM zhende to signal that some disalignment (i.e., the speaker’s reluctance to accept the proposal) is to follow.

4.3. Chinese zhenshi

The Chinese expression zhen-shi, literally ‘be truly/correctly so’ (zhen ‘true’ + shi ‘be so’), denotes truthfulness of the described entity, either a choice of expression or the content of a statement. In the historical record, the expression first occurs from the Warring States period (475–221 BCE), as a syntactic construction, not univerbated, thus having a compositional meaning of ‘be truly (so)’. It continues to be used as a syntactic construction until the Northern Song dynasty (960–1127). In the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), the internal cohesion increases and the syntactic construction (zhen-shi) becomes a univerbated word (zhenshi) carrying the adverbial function. In this word, the semantic focus is on zhen while shi is peripheral (thus, departing from the predicative use (‘(X) is truly so’)). In this period, however, the adverbial usuage of zhenshi ‘truly’ is numerically insignificant. One such example is shown in the following excerpts:

(14)        Adverbial zhenshi (Ming dynasty)

[Just now, the mother’s worries turned into joy, and she smiled brightly, saying,]

“亏得儿子峥嵘有日，奋发有时，真是谢天谢地！”

“Kuīdé          érzi        zhēngróng-yǒu-rì,               fènfā-yǒu-shí,       zhēnshi   xiètiānxièdì!

fortunately  son       prominent-have-day       strive-have-time  truly   thank.heaven.thank.earth

‘ “Fortunately, son is extraordinary, and sometimes he works hard; truly, thank God.”’

(Ming dynasty, 17c. Jīn Gǔ Qíguān, Miracles of the Past and Present by Bao Weng Lao Ren)

At a later time, in the Qing dynasty (1636–1912), the adverbial usage increases. As was the case with zhende in the previous section, zhenshi also begins to develop into a DM. With the persisting semantics of the source, its primary function is to affirm what is said (e.g., ‘That is true and correct’), but in the 20^th century, it has acquired diverse discourse functions with the influence of the context and conceptual extension.

4.3.1. Discontent (zhenshi)

The first, and most frequent function of the DM zhenshi is to signal negative stance of the speaker, such as discontented emotion or critical attitude, paraphrasable as ‘I’m not happy with you/that...’. The discontent is generally a mild one, typically with respect to the situation, or someone indicated in the discourse, or the interlocutor, but it can be a stronger as in blaming someone for misconduct. The negative attitude signaled by zhenshi, however, is not as strong as challenge indicated by the Korean DM cincca (see 4.1.3 above). What the speaker is unhappy with may be expressed before or after the DM, as shown in the following excerpts, taken from Early Modern Chinese and Modern Chinese data:⁷

(15)        Discontent zhenshi (Early Modern Chinese and Modern Chinese)

a. 这个人一想，再要是孩子凑多了，更不好办了。真是！

Zhège rén        yì-xiǎng,     zài            yàoshi háizi        còu        duō        le,

this  person       once-think         again    if         child       gather       more       ptcl

gèng     bùhǎo           bàn            le.        Zhēnshi!

further  not.good       handle           ptcl         dm

‘This person thought that if there were even more children, it would be even more difficult to handle. DM (= Indeed!)’

(Qing dynasty, 1890, Xiǎo Wǔ Yì, The Five Little Moralities)

b. 秀芬急得说：“真是！凤姐怎么还不来？”

Xiùfēn       jídé        shuō:   “Zhēnshi!        Fèngjiě        zěnme        háibù        lái?”

[name]       anxiously       say        dm       [name]       how       still.not         come

‘Xiu Fen anxiously exclaimed, “DM (= Indeed!) Why hasn’t Feng Jie arrived yet?”’

(Modern Chinese, 1964, Zhàndòu de Qīngchūn, Fighting Youth)

c. [Anyway, it’s not something honorable or prestigious,]

何必问来问去，自寻烦恼？真是！

hébì        wènlái               wènqù,        zì-xún               fánnǎo?        Zhēnshi!

why       ask.come       ask.go       self-seek       trouble              dm

‘Why bother asking around and causing unnecessary trouble? DM (= Indeed!)’

(1947, Wéi Chéng, Siege by Qian Zhongshu)

d. A: [Is it the Li family again?]

B:       “那还不是。那个男人啊，真是！丢了事，天天喝酒，越没有钱越喝酒。”

Nà        hái        búshì.        Nàgè        nánrén        a,               zhēnshi!

that       still       not       that       man                     ah              dm

Diū-le        shì,        tiāntiān        hējiǔ,           yuè        méi-yǒu        qián       yuè        hējiǔ.

lose-perf       job    everyday   drink.liquor   more   not-have  money  more  drink.liquor

‘That’s right. That man, DM (= really; how dreadful he is)! He never goes to work but drinks every day. The less money he has, the more he drinks.’

(Modern Chinese, 20th c. Bēi Gē, Elegy by Zeng Zhuo)

In the examples above, zhenshi signals that the speaker (in (15a), the person being quoted, not the narrator) is unhappy with a hypothetical situation of having too many children to take care of; in (15b) the speaker is unhappy with the tardy person Feng Jie or with the delay being caused by him; in (15c) the speaker is annoyed by the repeated occurrence of an undesirable event or action; and in (15d) the speaker is expressing his disapproval toward the man with a blameworthy lifestyle. It is interesting to note that early instances of zhenshi nearly always occur as an affirmation/confirmation (‘That’s right’) of something negative (‘That’s right – it’s bad’), unlike its formal relative zhende, which does not show such propensity in evaluative polarity.

4.3.2 Sudden remembrance (zhenshi)

The next function of zhenshi is to signal sudden remembrance or realization, paraphrasable as ‘Oh, I forgot’, ‘Oh, that reminds me!’ Since people utter this DM normally spontaneously at the moment of remembrance, it is said before the content of the remembrance is presented. This is illustrated in the following excerpt⁸:

(16)        Sudden remembrance zhenshi (Early Modern Chinese and Modern Chinese)

[‘Zheng Xiong said, “Brother Yang, what do you three usually do for a living?” Yang Ming replied, “We work as bodyguards outside. May I know your honorable surname?”]

马俊说：“真是，我也忘了，这是我拜兄，他姓郑名雄，名号人称铁面天王。”

Mǎjùn        shuō: “Zhēnshi,   wǒ   yě        wàng-le,        zhè        shì    wǒ   bàixiōng,

[name]       say       dm                   I     also       forget-perf       this       be     I       sworn.brother

tā        xìng       zhèng        míng       xióng,        mínghào

he       surname        [name]       first.name       [name]       name.and.alias      

rénchēng         tiěmiàn        tiānwáng.”

person.call       iron.face       heavenly.king

‘Ma Jun said, “Indeed (= oh, I forgot!), I forgot to introduce. This is my sworn brother. His surname is Zheng, and his name is Xiong. He is widely known as the Iron-faced Heavenly King.”’                 

 (Qing dynasty, Jìgōng Quánzhuán, The Complete Biography of Jigong)

Since sudden remembrance or realization normally involves the speaker’s memory lapse, this type of affirmation (‘you are right’) marked by the truth-DM normally involves speaker’s self-reproachment about the lapse, thus, indicating the general negative-bias of zhenshi, as shown in the example above.

5. Discussion

In the foregoing sections, we have looked into diverse functions of truth-DMs in Korean and Chinese with examples taken from historical and contemporary corpora. Now we turn to a discussion of some issues of theoretical importance, i.e., notable changes at various levels of grammar and commonalities and differences between Korean and Chinese.

5.1. Notable changes at various levels of grammar

 DM development in general involves change at multiple levels of grammar. Among the most prominent changes is the semantic change. For instance, the meaning changes from the sentential meaning to the sentence-external meaning (Heine et al. 2020, Heine et al. 2021). The original ‘tru(th)’ meaning of truth-DMs has undergone desemanticization, i.e., loss of meaning, in most usages of the truth-DMs. Korean truth-DM cincca used as a pause-filler is among the clearest instances of extensive desemanticization. In DM uses, the original content meaning of ‘true’ has become a speech-act unit (cf. Sweetser 1990) or of procedural function (Hansen 1997, Schourup 1999, Wilson 2011). For instance, usages with the content meaning, e.g., ‘true love’, ‘truly happy’ make a good contrast with the procedural meaning, e.g., ‘what I’m saying truthfully is that...’ or ‘what you truly need to pay attention to is that...’ As shown in these paraphrases, despite the desemanticization that has occurred to a variable extent, the functions of the Truth-DMs are directly or indirectly, related to ‘truthfulness’.

It is generally accepted that DMs lose their ability to make propositional contributions, i.e., they do not contribute to the truth conditions (cf. Hansen 1997, Schourup 1999, Haselow 2017) and so they may be truth-conditionally optional (Jucker 2002). As illustrated in the foregoing exposition, the truth-DMs are often positionally detached from the clause and thus its direct semantic link to the proposition is lost. The loss of propositional meaning is obvious in the contrast between ‘a true story’ (cincca yayki) and ‘Look at this guy, truly!’ (i yangpani cincca; in (3) above). This is in line with the observation that DM development may involve functional change from sentence-structuring function to metatextual function (Heine et al. 2020, 2021).

It has also been widely observed that DMs carry diverse functions (Jucker 2002, Rhee & Koo 2021). Indeed, the truth-DMs in Korean and Chinese are particularly multifunctional. A brief mention of classification is in order in this context. An interesting aspect is that, as Rhee and Koo (2021: 77) note, the functions of de-contextualized DMs are hard to identify but those of the contextualized DMs are largely unambiguous because diverse interpretive cues are available in the context, even though it is often difficult to name the function explicitly. The functions of DMs are subtle, and their classification largely depends on granularity of analyses. For instance, the discontent function and the challenge function of the Korean DM cincca (in 4.1.2 and 4.1.3, respectively), may be collapsed into one for their conceptual similarity of negative emotions, which, however, were separately named for their differences in directedness, i.e., self-directed discontent and other-directed challenge, as well as their differences in illocutionary force. Conversely, the discontent function in (15a) through (15c) and the reproaching function in (15d) of the Chinese DM zhenshi may be separated by the perceived differences in strength, i.e., mild discontent and strong reproach, which, however, were treated under a single function for greater similarity than differences.

Another notable aspect of DM development is the change in prosody. It has been observed that DMs tend to be set off prosodically or ‘less integrated’ (Heine et al. 2021: 48), and further that, as a result of erosion, a common concomitant of grammaticalization, DMs tend to be phonologically short (Brinton 2017, Heine et al. 2020, 2021). The truth-DMs tend to have a pause before and/or after them, more rigidly so with Chinese DMs. In this context it is notable that Korean DMs occurring at the right-periphery position tend to be fully integrated with the preceding word (Koo & Rhee 2013, Kim & Sohn 2015), a tendency also observed in other languages (Mulder and Thompson 2008, among others). As for the length, the truth-DMs in Korean and Chinese are indeed phonologically short, but they have not undergone phonological erosion to a meaningful level, largely due to the fact that the source constructions were already short from the beginning (note that all of them were bi-syllabic), not having enough phonological substance to be subjected to erosion.

The last point relates to positionality. As a result of grammaticalization of DMs, the forms change from positionally constrained placement to less constrained placement (Heine et al. 2021: 48). This is also the case with the truth-DMs in Korean and Chinese: they are no longer in the modifier position as an adjective or adverb, or in the argument position as a noun. They typically occur at the left-periphery or right-periphery position, whereby their semantic-pragmatic scope is wider than before.

As shown above, a comparative investigation of the truth-DMs in Korean and Chinese reveals a number of interesting commonalities, despite minor variations, with respect to meaning, function, prosody, and placement, among others (cf. Brinton 2017, Heine et al. 2014, 2020, 2021, Traugott 2022). However, there are differences in the two languages, to which we turn.

5.2. Korean and Chinese truth-DMs compared

There are a few areas where the development of the truth-DMs in Korean and Chinese diverge. Among the most prominent differences is that Chinese truth-DMs show different specialization between the two truth-DMs, i.e., zhenshi being negatively-biased and zhende not being polarity-specific. Unlike zhende, zhenshi from the incipient stage frequently occurs in negative contexts, mostly marking discontent and sudden remembrance (affirmation of negative evaluation, self-reproach, etc.). In Modern Chinese, the negativity associated with zhenshi tends to be more stable and stronger than it was in the earlier times, i.e., it is used nearly always in negative contexts and the degree of negativity is stronger as in reproach and annoyance. This polarization strongly suggests contextual influences in functional development, similar to the notion of ‘absorption’ (Bybee et al. 1994). The other truth-DM zhende does not exhibit such bias. The divergent development of Chinese truth-DMs stands in sharp contrast to that of the Korean truth-DM cincca, which emerges only a century ago, with a nominal or an adjectival use, and becomes a DM used in positive, negative, or neutral contexts.

Another difference between Korean and Chinese truth-DMs lies in the different levels of semantic bleaching, as briefly indicated in 5.1 above. The Korean truth-DM cincca can carry the function of pause-filling. Pause-fillers do not have any semantic content at a meaningful level: they are uttered just to fill the gap caused by the inability to produce unbroken utterance for various reasons, e.g., failure to find a proper word spontaneously (cf. ‘delay device’, Svartvik 1980), strategic display of hesitance for politeness (Rhee & Koo 2021), etc. The extreme level of semantic bleaching is easily observable with the English pause fillers uh, um, y’know, well, etc. (Östman 1981, Jucker 2015, Müller 2004), of which lexical meanings are either completely absent or not easily discernible. The pause-filling function is not found with the Chinese truth-DMs zhende and zhenshi, which suggests that semantic bleaching is more extensive with the Korean cincca. The ‘truth’ meaning is relatively more strongly preserved in Chinese truth-DMs (cf. ‘persistence’, Hopper 1991).

Still another difference is observed with respect to prosody. Prosody is often different depending on the function (Hancil 2013, Rhee 2020, Rhee & Koo 2021). Among prosodic features, the utterance length (i.e., speed) is particularly strongly correlated with the functions. For instance, Korean truth-DM cincca is spoken fast when it carries the emphasis, surprise, and sudden remembrance functions, and it is spoken slowly when it carries the discontent and pause-filling functions. In the latter case, the DM occurs at the right-periphery with a trailing intonation, signaling inability to complete the utterance due to the difficulties in lexical search or due to overwhelming emotions in the contexts of irritation, frustration, etc. It is interesting to note that the Truth-DMs in Chinese, especially the negatively-biased zhenshi, do not exhibit trailing intonation pattern.

The results of comparison of the truth-DM in Korean and Chinese with respect to their functions and notable features are summarized in Table 1.

Table 1. Comparison of Korean and Chinese truth-DMs

Functions and features	Korean cincca	Chinese zhende	Chinese zhenshi
Emphasis	√	√
Discontent	√		√
Challenge	√
Surprise	√	√
Sudden remembrance	√		√
Pause-filling	√
Noteworthiness		√
Disalignment		√
Trailing intonation	√
Positional freedom	√	√	√
Metatextuality	√	√	√
Desemanticization	more extensive	less extensive	less extensive
Evaluative bias			Negative

6. Summary and conclusion

This paper investigated the grammaticalized functions of truth-DM in Korean and compared them with two Chinese truth-DMs. The Korean lexeme cincca (in the form of cinsca) first occurs around the turn of the 20^th century, and its grammaticalized form, the DM cincca, emerges in the mid-20^th century, inheriting much of the ‘truth’ semantics from its predecessor forms. Korean cincca carries the functions of marking emphasis, discontent, challenge, surprise, sudden remembrance/realization, and pause-filling.

Chinese truth-DMs zhende and zhenshi became univerbated as adverbs and then developed into DMs around the turn of the 20^th century. The Chinese zhende carries the functions of marking emphasis, preface to noteworthy information, surprise, and preface to upcoming disalignment, whereas zhenshi carries the functions of marking discontent and sudden remembrance, the latter with a strong overtone of self-reproach. Zhenshi signals negative stance, revealing the influence of the context at the incipient stage. Thus, Chinese truth-DMs show divergence in marking evaluative-emotional polarity, e.g., zhenshi is generally negatively-biased, whereas zhende is not.

The developments of truth-DMs in Korean and Chinese share much in common, corroborating the thesis that grammatical functions largely depend on the semantics of the source lexeme (Heine et al. 1991, Heine 1997, Bybee et al. 2024). The conceptual motivation of the emergence of truth-DMs in Korean and Chinese seems to be based on the conceptualization of ‘truth’ as being not easily accessible or hidden, thus its manifestation being extraordinary and its realization inducing surprise (cf. Rhee 2022). All DM functions are directly or indirectly related to the notion of ‘truth’, but semantic bleaching is extensive with the pause-filler function. Korean and Chinese truth-DMs exhibit features typical of grammaticalization in terms of their meaning, function, placement, etc., but phonological erosion is not prominent.

Abbreviations

acc: accusative; adn: adnominalizer; clsf: classifier; conn: connective; dm: discourse marker; end: sentence-ender; excl: exclamative; gen: genitive; hon: honorific; hort: hortative; intj: interjective; nom: nominative; perf: perfective; pol: polite; pst: past; ptcl: particle; purp: purposive; rc: resultative complementizer

 

_{¹ Special thanks go to the developers of these corpora and search programs for generously granting their use for our research.}

_{² Two Chinese-Korean historical dictionaries (Yekeyuhaypo 1775 & Pangenyusek 1778) show that Chinese zhen and zhende are equal to cincis in Korean. Even though cincca is first attested in 1923, the DM function is first observed in a 1964 drama, Culkewun wulicip [Our sweet home].}

_{³ If cca is indeed related to the Sino-Korean morpheme ca (子; ‘son, thing, or a nominalizer’ or 者 ‘person, thing, or a nominalizer’), it is a fully Koreanized morpheme in contemporary Korean, as found in kacca ‘a fake thing’, chocca ‘a novice’, kongcca ‘something free of charge’, sayngcca ‘uncooked food; an unexperienced person’, and many other similarly formed words. Hanyengcacen (1897) indicates zhende (眞的) as its Chinese counterpart, with the meaning in English ‘what is real, genuine quality, a sincere person’.}

_{⁴ In examples, the lines that do not require morphemic glosses are given in English translation within square brackets and supplementary information not present in the original text but is helpful for understanding the meaning is given in parenthesis in translation.}

_{⁵ De in Modern Chinese is a multifunctional morpheme, e.g., markers of genitive (‘of’), relativization (‘that/which’), nominalization, affirmativity, among others.}

_{⁶ As Haiping Long (p.c.) points out, zhende in this function tends to occur with a rising tone. As is the case with the Thai ‘truth’-based DM (Khammee 2024), which utilizes the appeal contour for certain functions, tonal or suprasegmental differentiations may be associated with particular discourse functions.} 

_{⁷ According to the generally accepted periodization of the Chinese language, the Qing dynasty times (1636–1912) belong to Early Modern Chinese (1271–1912), encompassing the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties for over six centuries. The language of the Early Modern Chinese records dating from the late Qing dynasty times, especially those written around the turn of the 20th century, are similar to that of Modern Chinese.}

_{⁸ The exact year of publication of Jìgōng quán chuán is unknown, but is generally believed to be around the turn of the century, i.e., between 1875–1908, during the reign of Emperor Guangxu of the Qing dynasty.}

About the authors

Seongha Rhee

Mahidol University; Hankuk University of Foreign Studies

Email: srhee@hufs.ac.kr
ORCID iD: 0000-0003-0312-0975

Professor of Linguistics at Mahidol University, Thailand and Professor Emeritus at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Korea. He received his Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Texas, Austin in 1996. His primary research interest is to identify cognitive and discursive mechanisms that enable language change from the crosslinguistic and typological perspectives. He published World Lexicon of Grammaticalization (co-author, 2019, CUP); book chapters in The Cambridge Handbook of Korean Linguistics (2022, CUP); and research articles in Nature, Journal of Pragmatics, Language Sciences, Russian Journal of Linguistics and Lingua, among others.

Nakhon Pathom, Thailand; Seoul, Republic of Korea

Lin Zhang

Seoul National University

Author for correspondence.
Email: linwkd@snu.ac.kr
ORCID iD: 0009-0004-3826-536X

doctoral candidate in the Department of Korean Language and Literature at Seoul National University. Her primary research interests focus on historical development of lexical and grammatical forms in Korean, as well as comparative diachronic studies between Korean and Chinese

Seoul, Republic of Korea

References