Korean grammar

This article is a description of the morphology, syntax, and semantics of Korean. For phonetics and phonology, see Korean phonology. See also Korean honorifics, which play a large role in the grammar.[1]

Note on romanization

This article uses a form of Yale romanization to illustrate the morphology of Korean words. The Yale system is different from the Revised Romanization of Korean seen with place names.

Under the version of Yale used here, morphemes are written according to their underlying form rather than their spelling in the Korean writing system or pronunciation. Under this system, for example, the syllable which is written in Korean as ์—ˆ is analyzed as ess even though the ss would be pronounced t before another consonant, and the vowel e ใ…“ is pronounced low and somewhat rounded, closer to o. To avoid confusion, bold type will represent the morphology (in Yale), and italics will represent Revised Romanization.

Classification of words

Korean grammar
Hangul 9ํ’ˆ์‚ฌ
Hanja 9ๅ“่ฉž
Revised Romanization gupumsa
McCuneโ€“Reischauer kup'umsa

Korean grammarians have been classifying Korean words to parts of speech for centuries, but the modern standard is the one taught in public schools, chosen by South Korea's 1963 Committee on Education. This is the 9 pumsa (9ํ’ˆ์‚ฌ) system, which divides words into nine categories called pumsa.[2][3]

The pumsa are themselves grouped together according to the following chart.

Both cardinal and ordinal numbers are grouped into their own part of speech. Descriptive verbs and action verbs are classified separately despite sharing essentially the same conjugation. Verb endings constitute a large and rich class of morphemes, indicating such things in a sentence as tense, mood, aspect, speech level (of which there are 7 in Korean), and honorifics. Prefixes and suffixes are numerous, partly because Korean is an agglutinative language.

There are also various other important classes of words and morphemes that are not generally classified among the pumsa. 5 other major classes of words or morphemes are:

Substantives

Postpositions

Korean postpositions are also known as case markers. Examples include ๋Š” (neun, topic marker) and ๋ฅผ (reul, object marker). Postpositions come after substantives and are used to indicate the role (subject, object, complement, or topic) of a noun in a sentence or clause. For a larger list, see wikt:Category:Korean particles.

Case clitics

Both nouns and pronouns take case clitics. Pronouns are somewhat irregular. As with many clitics and suffixes in Korean, for many case clitics different forms are used with nouns ending in consonants and nouns ending in vowels. The most extreme example of this is in the nominative (subject), where the historical clitic i ์ด is now restricted to appearing after consonants, and a completely unrelated (suppletive) form -ka (pronounced -ga) appears after vowels.

Case clitics
CaseAfter vowelsAfter consonants
Nominative ka ๊ฐ€ -ga-i ์ด
Accusative lul ๋ฅผ -reulul ์„ -eul
Genitive -uy ์˜ -ui1
Dative
(also destination)
-ey ์— -e (inanimate)
-ey key ์—๊ฒŒ -ege (animate)
Locative
(place of event, also source)
-ey se ์—์„œ -eseo (inanimate)
-ey key se ์—๊ฒŒ์„œ -egeseo (animate)
Instrumental -lo ๋กœ -ro2-ulo ์œผ๋กœ -euro
Comitative
(also and)
-hako ํ•˜๊ณ  -hago
-wa ์™€kwa ๊ณผ -gwa
lang ๋ž‘ -rang-i lang ์ด๋ž‘ -irang

1 -uy ์˜ is a historical and antiquated spelling, which is now commonly pronounced [ษ›] as well as [ษฐi].
2 -lo also occurs with stems ending in ใ„น l.

Informational clitics
Information clitics
TypeAfter vowelsAfter consonants
Topic* nun ๋Š” neunun ์€ -eun
Additive* to ๋„ -do
Or na ๋‚˜ -na-i na ์ด๋‚˜ -ina

* The topic and additive markers mark the noun phrase with case markers. They override the nominative and accusative case markers rather than being attached after those case markers.

Nouns

๋ช…์‚ฌ(ๅ่ฉž) Myeongsa, "nouns," do not have grammatical gender and though they can be made plural by adding the suffix ๋“ค deul to the end of the word, in general the suffix is not used when the plurality of the noun is clear from context. For example, while the English sentence "there are three apples" would use the plural "apples" instead of the singular "apple", the Korean sentence ์‚ฌ๊ณผ๊ฐ€ ์„ธ ๊ฐœ ์žˆ์Šต๋‹ˆ๋‹ค sagwaga se gae isssumnida "apple three(things) exist" keeps the word ์‚ฌ๊ณผ sagwa "apple" in its unmarked form, as the numeral makes the plural marker redundant.

The most basic, fundamental Korean vocabulary is native to the Korean language, e.g. ๋‚˜๋ผ (nara, country), ๋‚  (nal, day). However, a large body of Korean nouns stem from the Korean pronunciation of Chinese characters e.g. ์‚ฐ(ๅฑฑ) san, "mountain," ์—ญ(้ฉ›) yeok, "station," ๋ฌธํ™”(ๆ–‡ๅŒ–) munhwa, "culture", etc. Many Sino-Korean words have native Korean equivalents and vice versa, but not always. The choice of whether to use a Sino-Korean noun or a native Korean word is a delicate one, with the Sino-Korean alternative often sounding more profound or refined. It is in much the same way that Latin- or French-derived words in English are used in higher-level vocabulary sets (e.g. the sciences), thus sounding more refined โ€“ for example, the Anglo-Saxon "ask" versus Romance "inquire".

For a list of Korean nouns, see wikt:Category:Korean nouns.

Grammatical cases in Korean are marked by particles placed after the nouns, similar to Japanese. Like Japanese, the nominative case has two distinctions, one representing the topic of a sentence and the other the subject. The most important case markers are the following:

Pronouns

Korean pronouns (๋Œ€๋ช…์‚ฌ, daemyeongsa, ไปฃๅ่ฉž) are highly influenced by the honorifics in the language. Pronouns change forms depending on the social status of the person or persons spoken to, e.g. the pronoun for "I" there is both the informal ๋‚˜ (na) and the honorific/humble ์ € (jeo). In general second person singular pronouns are avoided, especially when using honorific forms. Third-person pronouns are not well-developed and in most cases, a demonstrative geu 'that' in combination of a noun such as "saram" 'person' or "ges" 'thing' is used to fill the gap. Also, only for translation and creative writing, a newly coined term, "geu-nye" (literally, 'that woman') is used to aphoristically refer a female third person. A gender-neutral third-person is covered by the demonstrative "geu" (originally 'that'). For a larger list of Korean pronouns, see wikt:Category:Korean pronouns.

Numerals

Korean numerals (์ˆ˜์‚ฌ, susa, ๆ•ธ่ฉž) include two regularly used sets: a native Korean set and a Sino-Korean set. The Sino-Korean system is nearly entirely based on the Chinese numerals. The distinction between the two numeral systems is very important. Everything that can be counted will use one of the two systems, but seldom both. The grouping of large numbers in Korean follows the Chinese tradition of myriads (10,000) rather than thousands (1,000) as is common in Europe and North America.

Verbs (broadly speaking)

Processual verbs

Korean ๋™์‚ฌ(ๅ‹•่ฉž) dongsa, which include ์“ฐ๋‹ค (sseuda, "to use") and ๊ฐ€๋‹ค (gada, "to go"), are usually called, simply, "verbs." However, they can also be called "action verbs" or "dynamic verbs," because they describe an action, process, or movement. This distinguishes them from ํ˜•์šฉ์‚ฌ(ๅฝขๅฎน่ฉž) hyeongyongsa.

Korean verb conjugation depends upon the tense, aspect, mood, and the social relation between the speaker, the subject(s), and the listener(s). Different endings are used depending on the speaker's relation with their subject or audience. Politeness is a critical part of Korean language and Korean culture; the correct verb ending must be chosen to indicate the proper degree of respect or familiarity for the situation.

Descriptive verbs

ํ˜•์šฉ์‚ฌ(ๅฝขๅฎน่ฉž) Hyeongyongsa, sometimes translated as "adjectives" but also known as "descriptive verbs" or "stative verbs," are verbs such as ์˜ˆ์˜๋‹ค yeppeuda, "to be pretty" or ๋ถ‰๋‹ค bukda, "to be red." English does not have an identical grammatical category, and the English translation of a Korean hyeongyongsa is usually a linking verb + an English adjective. However, some Korean words which do not match that formula, such as ์•„์‰ฝ๋‹ค aswipda, a transitive verb which means "to lack" or "to want for", are still considered hyeongyongsa in Korean because they match the conjugation pattern for adjectives. For a larger list, see wikt:Category:Korean adjectives.

Copulative and existential verbs

The predicate marker i-ta ์ด๋‹ค serves as the copula, which links the subject with its complement, that is, the role 'to be' plays in English. For example, ๋Œ€๋‚˜๋ฌด๋Š” ํ’€์ด๋‹ค. Taynamwu-nun phwul-i-ta. "A bamboo is a grass." When the complement, which is suffixed by i-ta, ends in a vowel, i-ta contracts into -ta quite often as in following example, ์šฐ๋ฆฌ๋Š” ์นœ๊ตฌ๋‹ค. Wuli-nun chinkwu-ta. "We are friends." The past tense of i-ta is of course i-ess-ta. However, if it is attached after a vowel, it is always contracted into yess-ta. If not, it cannot be contracted.

To negate, a special adjective ani-ta ์•„๋‹ˆ๋‹ค is used, being one of the two cases that take complement (the other is toy-ta ๋˜๋‹ค). Two nouns take the nominative clitic i/ka ์ด/๊ฐ€ before the negative copula; one is the subject, and the other is the complement. For instance, in ๋Œ€๋‚˜๋ฌด๋Š” ๋‚˜๋ฌด๊ฐ€ ์•„๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. Taynamwu-nun namwu-ka ani-ta. "A bamboo is not a tree.", ๋Œ€๋‚˜๋ฌด๋Š” taynamwu-nun is the subject and ๋‚˜๋ฌด๊ฐ€ namwu-ka is the complement. The derived form aniyo ์•„๋‹ˆ์š” is the word for "no" when answering a positive question. (In the case of a negative question, aniyo is equivalent to "yes" in English.)

I-ta and ani-ta become ์ด์•ผ i-ya (often ์•ผ ya after a vowel) and ์•„๋‹ˆ์•ผ (์•„๋ƒ) ani-ya (anya) at the end of the sentence in hae-che style. In haeyo-che style, they become ์ด์—์š” i-ey-yo (often ์˜ˆ์š” yey-yo after a vowel) and ์•„๋‹ˆ์—์š” (์•„๋…œ์š”) ani-ey-yo (anyey-yo) as well as the less common forms ์ด์–ด์š”/์—ฌ์š” i-e-yo/ye-yo and ์•„๋‹ˆ์–ด์š” (์•„๋…€์š”) ani-e-yo (anye-yo).

The copula is only for "to be" in the sense of "A is B". For existence, Korean uses the existential verbs (or adjectives) iss-ta ์žˆ๋‹ค iss-/it-da "there is" and eps-ta ์—†๋‹ค eobs-/eop-da "there isn't." The honorific existential verb for iss-ta is kyeysi-ta ๊ณ„์‹œ๋‹ค gyesi-da.

Modifiers

Determinatives

Korean ๊ด€ํ˜•์‚ฌ(ๅ† ๅฝข่ฉž) gwanhyeongsa are known in English as "determiners," "determinatives," "pre-nouns," "adnouns," "attributives," "unconjugated adjectives," and "indeclinable adjectives." Gwanhyeongsa come before and modify or specify nouns, much like attributive adjectives or articles in English. Examples include ๊ฐ(ๅ„) kak, "each." For a larger list, see wikt:Category:Korean determiners.

Adverbs

Korean adverbs (๋ถ€์‚ฌ, busa, ๅ‰ฏ่ฉž) include ๋˜ (ddo, "also") and ๊ฐ€๋“ (gadeuk, "fully"). Busa, like adverbs in English, modify verbs. For a larger list, see wikt:Category:Korean adverbs.

Other content words

Exclamations

Korean interjections (๊ฐํƒ„์‚ฌ, gamtansa, ๆ„ŸๆญŽ่ฉž) are also known in English as "exclamations". Examples include ์•„๋‹ˆ (ani, "no"). For a larger list, see wikt:Category:Korean interjections.

Syntax

Korean is typical of languages with verb-final word order, such as Japanese, in that most affixes are suffixes and clitics are enclitics, modifiers precede the words they modify, and most elements of a phrase or clause are optional.

Complex sentences

Connected sentences

Container sentences

Note that -(u)m is used in more formal settings, meanwhile -ki is used casually.
๋‚˜๋Š” ๊ทธ๊ฐ€ ์ด๋ฏธ ์ฃฝ์—ˆ์Œ์„ ๋ชฐ๋ž๋‹ค. "I didn't know that he was already dead."
๊ทธ๋…€๊ฐ€ ๋ฒ”์ธ์ž„์€ ๋ช…๋ฐฑํ•˜๋‹ค. "That she is the criminal is clear."
์ผํ•˜๊ธฐ(๊ฐ€) ์‹ซ๋‹ค. "I don't feel like working."
๋จน๊ธฐ(์—) ์ข‹๊ฒŒ ์ž๋ฅธ ์ฑ„์†Œ "vegetables chopped for the convenience of eating"
Accompanied with several dependent nouns, adjective clause can comprise idiomatic expressions, such as -ใ„น ๊ฒƒ์ด๋‹ค -l kes-i-ta for the future conjugation, -ใ„น ๊ฒƒ ๊ฐ™๋‹ค -l ket kat-ta "I suppose...", -ใ„น ์ˆ˜(๊ฐ€) ์žˆ๋‹ค/์—†๋‹ค -l swu-(ka) iss-ta/eps-ta "It is possible/impossible...", -ใ„น ๋ฆฌ๊ฐ€ ์—†๋‹ค -l li-ka eps-ta "It makes no sense that..."
๊ทธ๋Š” ์—ฌํƒœ ํ•œ ๋ฒˆ๋„ ๋Šฆ์€ ์ ์ด ์—†์—ˆ๋‹ค. ์˜ค๋Š˜ ์—ญ์‹œ ๊ทธ๋Š” ์ œ ์‹œ๊ฐ„์— ์˜ฌ ๊ฒƒ์ด๋‹ค. "He has never been late so far. Today, as usual, he'll be in time."
A lot of caution is needed when faced with -๊ฒŒ ํ•˜๋‹ค -key ha-ta and -๊ฒŒ ๋˜๋‹ค -key toy-ta, which may mean just "do -ly" and "become sth -ly", but also can make causative and passive verbs respectively; which are consisted of main and supportive verbs.
์ •์›์„ ์•„๋ฆ„๋‹ต๊ฒŒ ํ•˜๋‹ค (causative) โ†” ๋ฐœ๋ ˆ๋ฅผ ์•„๋ฆ„๋‹ต๊ฒŒ ํ•˜๋‹ค (adverbial; causative if intended)
๋ฐฉ์ด ๊น”๋”ํ•˜๊ฒŒ ๋˜๋‹ค (passive) โ†” ๊ฒฉํŒŒ๊ฐ€ ๊น”๋”ํ•˜๊ฒŒ ๋˜๋‹ค (adverbial; passive if intended)
The last syllable -ko is often dropped. Furthermore, if the verb ha-ta means 'to say' and is right next to the syllable -ko, then -๊ณ  ํ•˜๋‹ค -ko ha-ta is abridged becoming -๋‹ค -ta, which of course can conjugate.
๋ญ๋ผ๋””? (๋ญ๋ผ๊ณ  ํ•˜๋””?)
๋‚ด๊ฐ€ ๋ญ๋žฌ์–ด. (๋‚ด๊ฐ€ ๋ญ๋ผ๊ณ  ํ–ˆ์–ด.) ๊ดœํžˆ ๊ธฐ์šด๋งŒ ๋น ์กŒ๋„ค. "Do you remember what I said? You only got tired for nothing."

Supporting verbs/adjectives

Sometimes, just using an adverb is insufficient to express the exact meaning the speaker has in mind. The composition of a main verb (or adjective) and a supporting verb (or adjective) can be used in this case, alongside some grammatical features. Suffixes including -์•„/์–ด -โ€Šeโ„a, -๊ฒŒ -key, -์ง€ -ci, and -๊ณ  -ko are taken by the main verb (or adjective), and the supporting verb (or a.) follows it and is conjugated.

Examples using -โ€Šeโ„a

Examples using -key

Examples using -ci

Examples using -ko

Examples using other suffixes

Number

Korean has general number.[4] That is, a noun on its own is neither singular nor plural. It also has an optional plural marker tul ๋“ค -deul, which is most likely to be used for definite and highly animate nouns (primarily first- and second-person pronouns, to a lesser extent nouns and third-person pronouns referring to humans, etc.) This is similar to several other languages with optional number, such as Japanese.

However, Korean tul may also be found on the predicate, on the verb, object of the verb, or modifier of the object, in which case it forces a distributive plural reading (as opposed to a collective reading) and indicates that the word is attached to expresses new information.

For instance:

๋งŽ์ด๋“ค ๋จน๋‹ค๊ฐ€๋“ค ๊ฐ€๊ฑฐ๋ผ
manh-i-tulmek-taka-tulka-kera
manidษฏl mสŒkฬštaษกadษฏl kaษกสŒษพa
a_lot-ADV-PLeat-and-PLgo-IMP
'You guys eat well and go.'

In this case, the information that the subject is plural is expressed.

To add a distributive meaning on a numeral, ์”ฉ 'ssik' is used.

ํ•™์ƒ๋“ค์ด ํ’์„ ์„ ํ•˜๋‚˜์”ฉ ์ƒ€์–ด์š”
haksayng-tul-i phungsen-ulhana-ssik sa-ss-e-yo
hakฬšsษ›ล‹dษฏษพi pสฐuล‹sสฐสŒnษฏl hanasอˆikฬš sสฐasอˆสŒjo
student-PL-NOM balloon-ACC one-each buy-PRET-INT-POL
"The students bought a balloon each."

Now "balloon" is specified as a distributive plural.

Subjectโ€“verb agreement

While it is usually stated that Korean doesn't have subjectโ€“verb agreement, the conjugated verbs do, in fact, show agreement with the logical subject (not necessarily the grammatical subject) in several ways. However, agreement in Korean usually only narrows down the range of subjects. Personal agreement is shown partly on the verb stem before the tense-aspect-mood suffixes, and partly on the sentence-final endings.

Korean distinguishes:

Korean does not distinguish:

The following table is meant to indicate how the verb stem and/or the sentence ending can vary depending on the subject.The column labeled "jussive ending" contains the various jussive sentences endings in the plain style.

Person Person agreement on final ending
Jussive ending
1st sg (volition) -keyss-ta -๊ฒ ๋‹ค (common)
-(u)li-ta -๋ฆฌ๋‹ค
-(u)lyen-ta -๋ จ๋‹ค
-(u)ma -๋งˆ
1st pl (suggestion) -ca -์ž
2nd, 3rd (command) -โ€Šeโ„ala -์•„/์–ด๋ผ

Valency

Valency in Korean

Subordinate clauses

Verbs can take conjunctive suffixes. These suffixes make subordinate clauses.

One very common suffix -ko -๊ณ  -go, can be interpreted as a gerund if used by itself, or, with a subject of its own, as a subordinating conjunction. That is, mek.ko ๋จน๊ณ  meokgo means approximately "eating," koki lul mek.ko ๊ณ ๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ๋จน๊ณ  gogireul meokgo means "eating meat," and nay ka koki lul mek.ko ๋‚ด๊ฐ€ ๊ณ ๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ๋จน๊ณ  nae-ga gogi-reul meog-go means "I eat meat and..." or "My eating meat."

Another suffix, somewhat similar in meaning, is se ์„œ -seo which is, however, attached to long stem of a verb. The long stem of a verb is the one that is formed by attaching -โ€Šeโ„a ์–ด/์•„ -eo/-a after a consonant.

Both sometimes called gerunds, the verb form that ends in se and the one that ends in -ko juxtapose two actions, the action in the subclause and the action in the main clause. The difference between them is that with se the action in the subclause necessarily came first, while -ko conveys more of an unordered juxtaposition. se is frequently used to imply causation, and is used in many common expressions like manna se pan.kapsupnita ๋งŒ๋‚˜์„œ ๋ฐ˜๊ฐ‘์Šต๋‹ˆ๋‹ค Manna-seo bangapseumnida (literally, "Since I met you, I'm happy" -or- "Having met you, I'm happy"). If -ko was used instead, the meaning would be closer to "I meet you and I'm happy," that is, without any implied logical connection.

These are both subordinating conjunctive suffixes and can't (in the more formal registers, at least) derive complete sentences of their own without the addition of a main verb, by default the verb iss ์žˆ. Nay ka koki lul mek.ko issta ๋‚ด๊ฐ€ ๊ณ ๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ๋จน๊ณ  ์žˆ๋‹ค naega gogireul meokko itta therefore means "I am eating meat." The difference between this and the simple sentence nay ka koki lul meknun ta ๋‚ด๊ฐ€ ๊ณ ๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ๋จน๋Š”๋‹ค is similar to the difference in Spanish between "Estoy almorzando" and "Almuerzo," in that the compound form emphasizes the continuity of the action. The -se ์„œ form is used with the existential verb iss ์žˆ for the perfect. Mwuni yellye issta ๋ฌธ์ด ์—ด๋ ค ์žˆ๋‹ค 'the door has been opened' can be the example, although it would convey different meaning if the very syllable se were visible, ๋ฌธ์ด ์—ด๋ ค์„œ ์žˆ๋‹ค 'because the door is opened, it exist', meaning of which is not clear, though.

See also

References

  1. โ†‘ Much of the material in this article comes from the companion text to the NHK language materials Hanguru Nyลซmon (1985).
  2. โ†‘ Lee, Chul Young (2004). Essential Grammar for Korean as a second Language (PDF). pp. 18โ€“19. Retrieved 3 January 2010.
  3. โ†‘ Ihm, Ho Bin (2009). Korean Grammar for International Learners. Yonsei University Press. p. 1. ISBN 89-7141-554-1.
  4. โ†‘ Corbett, Greville G., Number, pages 137โ€“138, Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics, P240.8.C67 2000, ISBN 0-521-64016-4
  5. โ†‘ [ Pak, Miok et al. http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/portnerp/nsfsite/CSSP_handout.pdf " What Korean Promissives tell us about Jussive Clause Type"], Colloque de syntaxe et sรฉmantique ร  Paris 2005, retrieved on 3 December 2011
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