A Comparative Study of the Pragmatic Functions of ye (也) in Old Chinese and mariya (말이야) in Korean

The Old Chinese particle ye (也) and the Korean discourse marker mariya (말이야) both appear in sentence-medial and sentence-final positions and exhibit remarkably similar pragmatic functions. this study aims to explore the pragmatic function of ye by examining the grammaticalization process of mariya, which has lost its original lexical meaning and developed into a pragmatic marker. drawing on previous studies, it was observed that mariya undergoes a three-stage grammaticalization process, shifting from sentence-final to sentencemedial position, and ultimately serving as a pragmatic marker. based on these findings, it is hypothesized that ye likewise followed a similar grammaticalization path, eventually functioning as a pragmatic marker that conveys the speaker's certainty and emphasis within the structure of judgment sentences. to verify this, examples of ye from lunyu were extracted and analyzed in correspondence with the grammaticalization stages of mariya, focusing on translation patterns. the analysis confirms that both expressions evolved through parallel grammaticalization pathways and transformed into pragmatic markers. this provides evidence of cross-linguistic universality in the grammaticalization process of pragmatic markers. This study further identifies three distinct grammaticalization stages. Mariya-1 originates from the phrase mal-ida, which expresses an equative judgment where the subject and mal ("word") stand in an identity relation. In the ye-1 structure, the subject and nominal predicate also form either an identity or inclusion relation. although ye cannot fully replace the lexical meaning of mal, it functions as a vehicle for the speaker's judgment or definition, where mal is abstracted as "meaning" or "notion". in mariya-2, the lexical content of mal is further weakened at the sentence end, and reinterpreted pragmatically by the speaker to convey assertion, certainty, or emphasis. this corresponds to ye-2, which appears in explanatory or interpretive sentences composed of verbal predicates rather than nominal ones. like mariya-2, which can co-occur with other sentence-final modal particles, ye-2 also combines with additional sentence-final elements. Mariya-3, which appears in sentence-medial position, corresponds to ye-3, which combines with proper nouns, common nouns, temporal phrases, NP之VP, and VP structures. these forms typically highlight a topicalized element and draw attention to the following utterance. however, unlike mariya-3, ye-3 does not co-occur with conjunctions, a difference attributed to languagespecific grammatical features and the degree of grammaticalization.