From reality through contrast to counter-expectation

The Korean lexeme silsang, consisting of sil ‘real’ and sang ‘state’, displays interesting semantic and functional changes. It was first attested in 17th-century data with the meaning of ‘the reality’. The lexeme silsang has under-gone semantic and structural changes, and it survives as a noun denoting ‘reality’, an adverb ‘in reality’, and as a discourse marker with a few discursive meanings in contemporary Korean. The lexeme denotes counter-expectation as well as signalling contrast. Based on the data taken from historical and contemporary corpora, the developmental course of silsang in Korean reveals theoretically notable aspects: subjectification, intersubjectification, stance-marking, positionality, and source characteristics.