Two opposite implicatures of a focus particle

Analyzing diachronic and synchronic corpus data and utilizing the theoretical approaches of grammaticalization and intersubjectification, this study investigates the development of two Korean stance markers: the “conceding marker” ha-ki-ya (pro-verb ha ‘do’+nominalizer ki+ focus ya ) and the now-obsolete “rejecting marker” V-ki-ya ( V repeating an earlier verb whose proposition it rejects+ ki + ya ). How these two cognate forms sharing nominalizer ki and focus ya ended up encoding two opposite meanings has not been explored. This study demonstrates that focus ya can evoke two opposite scalar implicatures, “the most likely one” in scale-preserving contexts and “the least likely one” in scale-reversing contexts (e.g., negative or interrogative sentences), and suggests that the former implicature prompted the development of conceding ha-ki-ya , while the latter prompted that of rejecting V-ki-ya . The study further proposes that focus ya shares features with topic marker nun , which similarly participated in the coinage of two stance markers, conceding ha-ki-nun and rejecting V-ki-nun .