A study on rhetorical questions in Korean: From the view of Verum Focus

This paper explores Korean rhetorical questions through Verum Focus (VF), which emphasizes truth value at a proposition's polarity focus. Traditionally, these questions are treated as a strong assertions that update common ground and generate polarity-reversing implications. The study views rhetorical questions as VF-marked, responding to presupposed or contextually accommodated polar alternatives. It introduces a syntactic structure with a polarity functional head, deriving meaning via a negative identity function at the LF. The paper's contribution lies in its new VF-based analysis of Korean rhetorical questions, suggesting further cross-linguistic research for broader insights.