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The Expression of Modality in Korean
PhD dissertation, Berne, 1996

The object of investigation of this thesis is the expression of semantic contents of modality in the Korean language, and its aim is to provide a comprehensive description and analysis of the means available for modal expressions which is based on the assumption that the linguistic analysis of modality should not be concerned with modal function for its own sake, but rather that the analysis of function should be linked to the distribution of form. In addition, a typological perspective is integrated into this approach (although this study is focussed on Korean and is therefore not comparative) in order to provide a possible link with other works on modality, be they more general or language-specific. Its ultimate goal, therefore, is to give both a functionally descriptive account of the ways and means of expressing modality in Korean, and an explanatory formal analysis of mood and modality in Korean.