Abstract It has been discussed that there is a close relationship between sentence ending particles and clause types in Korean. In this paper, I focus on the cases where we find interesting pairings between the form and the function. Specifically, the constructions that I investigate have a form of interrogative while they have the illocutionary force of exclaiming. After discussing their syntactic and semantic/pragmatic properties, I characterize them as wh-marked polar interrogatives in Korean. These wh-marked polar interrogatives are used to express surprise or unexpectedness of the speaker towards the prior assertion or listener’s belief in the context. Due to the presence of a wh-word, the sentence expresses the speaker’s judgment that p < likely ¬p.
Bokyung Mun (Fri,) studied this question.