Topic Continuity in Korea Narrative

한국 설화문에서의 화제표현의 연속성

Language has a social function to communicate information. Linguists have gradually paid their attention to the function of language since the nineteen sixties, especially to the relationship of form, meaning and the function. The relationship could be more clearly grasped through disciyrse-based analysis than through sentence-based analysis. Many researches were centered on the discourse functional notion of topic. In the early 1970's the subject was defined as the grammatiocalized topic the topic as a discrete single constituent of the clause. In the late 1970's several lingusts including Givon suggerted that the topic was not an atomic, disctete entity, and that the clause could have more than one topic. The purpose of the present study is, following Givon, to study grammatical coding devices of topic and to measure the relative topic continuity/discontinuity of participant argu, ents in Korean narratives. By so doing, I would like to shed some light on effective ways of communicating information. The grammatical coding devices analyzed are the following eight structures: zero-anaphora, personal pronous, demonstrative pronouns, names, noun phrases following demonstratives, noun phrases following possessives, definite noun phrases and indefinite referentials. The narrative studied for the count was taken from the KoreanCIA chief's Testiomny:Revolution and Idol by Hyung Wook Kim. It was chosen because it was assumed that Kim's purpose in the novel was to tell a true story, which would not distort the natural use of language for literary effect. The measures taken in the analysis wre those of 'lookback', 'persistence', ambiguity'. The first of these, 'lookback', is a measure of the size of gap between the previous occurrence of a referent and its current occurence in the clause. The meausure of persistence, which is a measure of the speaker's topocal intent, reflects the topic's importance in the discourse. The third measure is a measure of ambiguity. This is necessary for assessing the disruptive effects that other topics within five previous clauses may have on topic identification. The more other topics are present within five previous clauses, the more difficult is the task of correct identification of a topic. The results of the present study show that the humanness of entities is the most powerful factior in topic continutiy in narrative discourse. The semantic roles of human arguments in narrative discourse tend to be agents or experiences. Since agents and experiences have high topicality in discourse, human entities clearly become clausal or discoursal topics. The results also show that the grammatical devices signal varying degrees of topic continuity discontinuity in continuous discourse. The more continuous a topic argument is, the less it is coded. For example, personal pronouns have the most continutiy and indefinite referentials have the least continutiy. The study strongly shows that topic continuity discontinutiy is controlled not only by grammatical devices available in the language but by socio-cultural factors and writer's intentions.

언어는 정보교환이라는 사회적 기능을 가지고 있다. 60년대 이래로 언어학자들의 관심이 언어의 정보전달 기능, 즉 어떠한 의미가 어떤 형식을 통하여 어떻게 전달되는가 하는, 의미, 형식, 기능의 관계에 점차 집중되게 되었다. 이러한 관계는 문장분석보다는 담화분석을 통하여 더욱 명백하게 파악된다. 본 연구는 한국 설화문에서 사용되는 화제표현의 방법과 표현된 화제의 연속성을 측정함으로 효율적인 정보교환의 방법을 살펴보았다. 분석된 문법구조들은 영대용, 인칭대명사, 지시대명사, 고유대명사, 지시사 뒤에 오는 명사, 소유격을 따르는 명사, 한정적 명사 그리고 비한정적 명사, 모두 8가지이다. 본 연구의 결과를 다음과 같이 요약할수 있다. 첫째, 한국 설화문에서 '인간임'(humanness)이 가장 강한 화제의 연속성을 나타낸다. 인간지시 논항들은 주로 행위자 또는 경엄자를 나타내기 때문에 절이난 담화의 화제역학을 한다. 둘째, 이들 문법구조들은 각기 다른 화제표현의 연속성 정도를 나타낸다. 연속성 정도가 높은 구조일수록 표현이 간단하며, 연속성의 정도가 낮을수록 표현이 복잡하다. 셋째, 화제표현의 연속성은 구조들의 통사적 특성 이외에 사회적문화적 요인들과 작가의 화용상의 목적 등에 좌우되기도 한다. 마지막으로, 실질적인 정보교환의 방법을 파악하기 위하여, 구어체와 문어체 담화문을 비교분석하여 화제표현의 효율적 방법을 고찰할 것을 제의한다.