• Korean Journal of Logic
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.61-85
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• 2013

The author, after introducing the concept of de re belief and discussing de re/de dicto ambiguity in belief context and modal context, concludes that modal sentences of Korean language does not show any distinctive traits against English. He, after discussing this ambiguity in negative sentence a la Russell, tries to show that Korean provides two way of negation construction, one of which corresponds to de re negation (primary occurrence in Russell's terms). De re reading makes referentially transparent context, thus permits substitutions of identicals salva veritate; De dicto reading does not. Korean ending 'rago', used with quotation verbs, speech act verbs and cognitive attitude verbs, deserves some attention in that it permits de re sentences in addition to de re/de dicto ambiguous sentences. 'Rago' also makes speaker's commitment to the content of the intensionally contained clause 'neutral', in contrast with other Korean endings such as 'um/im' and 'raneun gut' which make speaker's positive commitment. This explains why the maxim of western epistemology that knowledge presupposes truth does not hold in Korean 'rago' sentences.