The purpose of this study is to investigate the grammatical and semantic characteristics of the exclamatory ending -ara/-era in Contemporary Korean. The exclamatory ending -ara/-era is rarely addressed in existing Korean grammar studies. This is becau...
The purpose of this study is to investigate the grammatical and semantic characteristics of the exclamatory ending -ara/-era in Contemporary Korean. The exclamatory ending -ara/-era is rarely addressed in existing Korean grammar studies. This is because, while -ara/-era is frequently used in everyday language, its usage is limited, making it challenging to gather examples. As a result, previous studies were conducted using created example sentences. Accordingly, this study attempts to reveal the grammatical and semantic characteristics of -ara/-era by using thesemi-spoken corpus as research data. Additionally, it attempts a new analysis by incorporating -ara/-era into the comparative study of –kwuna and –ne. The comparative study of -kuna and –ne is a topic that has already been discussed in various ways in previous research.
In Chapter 2, previous research on the exclamatory endings –ara/-era, -kwuna, and -ne was reviewed and issues that needed to be investigated focusing on –ara/-era were summarized.
In Chapter 3, the grammatical and semantic characteristics of the exclamatory ending –ara/-era were examined using examples of –ara/-era extracted from the research data of this paper. The most central grammatical feature of the exclamatory ending –ara/-era is the restriction of the preceding stem, but the list of adjectives that form the exclamatory ending by combining –ara/-era has not been specifically presented or confirmed. Accordingly, this paper confirmed the list of adjectives combined with the exclamatory form –ara/-era in the research data of this paper. The adjectives in this list are arbitrarily shortened and named ‘Exclamatory adjectives’ for convenience of description. The exclamatory adjectives in this paper are those that are clearly used in practice in combination with the exclamatory form –ara/-era, and are adjectives that are frequently used and have a high possibility of use.
The Exclamatory adjectives in contemporary Korean encompass psychological adjectives, sensory adjectives, and state-property adjectives. When a psychological or sensory adjectives is combined with the exclamatory ending -ara/-era, only the first person is used as the subject. This is due to the characteristics of psychological and sensory adjectives. When a state-property adjectives is combined with the exclamatory ending -ara/-era, the first person cannot be placed in the subject position. This is due to the characteristics of -ara/-era.
A subclass of state-property adjectives includes personality adjectives that evaluate the qualities of a person. It was confirmed that personality adjectives generally use -ara/-era with high frequency. The exclamatory ending -ara/-era combines with phrases in addition to psychological adjectives, sensory adjectives, and state-property adjectives. Phrases that combine with the exclamatory ending -ara/-era include idioms, -ko siphta, and –kido hada. However, –kido hada must be combined with an adjectives. The combination of -ara/-era and idioms proves the theoretical assumption that not only individual words are listed as lexemes in lexicon, but idioms are also recognized and registered. When the exclamatory ending -ara/-era is combined with an idiom, the second or third person takes the place of the subject. shphta is an auxiliary adjective. The only construction of shphta that can be combined with the exclamatory ending -ara/-era is –ko shphta. –ko shphta shares the same grammatical and semantic features as psychological adjectives. When the exclamatory ending -ara/-era is combined with –ko shphta, the first person takes the place of the subject. -kido hada is used as a verb when combined with an verb, and as an adjective when combined with an adjective. The exclamatory ending -ara/-era only combines with -kido hada following an adjective. In this case, hada is an auxiliary adjective. When the exclamatory ending -ara/-era is combined with an –kido hada, the second or third person takes the place of the subject.
The exclamatory ending -ara/-era is combined only with -si- among the prefinal endings -si-, -ess-, and –keyss-. As is well known, when the first person is placed in the subject position, the preverbal ending -si- cannot be combined. Therefore, -si- is combined only when state-property adjectives, an idiom, or –kido hada, which can be in the second or third person, appears as the preceding stem of –ara/-era.
The exclamatory ending -ara/-era, which is the subject of study in this paper, has the same form as the imperative ending -ara/-era. It has been confirmed that among adjectives, those that evaluate a person's personality, attitude, or appearance can create exclamatory or imperative sentences. The exclamatory ending -ara/-era is based on a sentence pattern in which only the predicate appears. In the -ara/-era sentence pattern, only independent words that are not related to any component of the sentence can appear. Among these independent words, only exclamations and vocative words are included. exclamations can only be combined with emotional exclamations that convey the speaker's emotions. Emotional exclamations primarily appear at the beginning of the -ara/-era sentence pattern. Vocative words omit the vocative case particles and appear simply as a noun. In most cases, wuli and nay take precedence, and their position is flexible. exclamations and vocative words do not necessarily have to appear. -ara/-era expresses the speaker’s subjective feelings or judgment at the scene of speech. It has a stronger immediacy than any other exclamatory ending.
In Chapter 4, based on the discussion in Chapter 3, the grammatical and semantic characteristics of -ara/-era and –kwuna, –ne were compared. Unlike -ara/-era, which has several restrictions, –kwuna, –ne has no preceding stem restrictions and no subject restrictions. However, when –kwuna, –ne is combined with a psychological or sensory adjectives, the first person can be used as the subject due to the characteristics of these adjectives. However, when –kwuna is combined with a psychological adjectives or a sensory adjectives, the second or third person can be used as the subject. This is due to the characteristics of –kwuna. The subject restrictions of psychological and sensory adjectives are resolved when used with expressions expressing inferences. –kwuna can express information learned through inference. –kwuna does not have any restrictions on the prefinal ending. –ne freely combines with -si-, -ess-, -keyss-, but does not combine with -te-.
-ara/-era can be said without considering the listener. –kwuna, –ne may or may not take the listener into consideration. Since –kwuna, –ne does not impose restrictions on whether the listener is considered, the speaker can confirm information they have or are guessing to the listener. However, -ara/-era cannot be used in the usage explained previously. When it is necessary to elevate the listener, only –ne combines with the auxiliary -yo. -ara/-era cannot combine with -yo, and –kwuna can combine -yo with its abbreviation –kwun. -ara/-era, –kwuna, –ne can also be combined with ha- and used as –ara/-era ha-, –kwuna ha-, –ne ha-. –ara/-era ha- is mainly used as na mollala ha-, joara ha-. –ara/-era ha-, –kwuna ha-, –ne ha- can be followed by a human noun or a specific noun to express detailed aspects of a character's facial expression or psychology. It can be used in both written and spoken language. Unlike –ara/-era, which only combines with emotional exclamations, –kwuna, –ne can be combined with various types of exclamations.
-ara/-era expresses the speaker’s feelings or emotions. The speaker’s feelings or emotions expressed in -kwuna and -ne accompany new facts. -ara/-era expresses facts learned through direct perception. -kwuna can express facts learned through inference as well as direct perception. -ne mainly expresses facts learned through direct perception, but it can also express inference when what is directly perceived is judged to be solid evidence. At this time, it often appears in combination with –ess-, -keyss-. The information expressed with -ara/-era is immediate. -kwuna is used to express a long process of thinking. -ne is used to express an immediate or brief thought process.
Finally, Chapter 5 concludes with a brief summary of what was discussed in the main text.