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.
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 is analyzed as ess even though the ss would be pronounced t before another consonant. To avoid confusion, bold type will represent the morphology (in Yale), and italics will represent Revised Romanization.
Classification of words
The modern standard of word classification and the one taught in public schools was chosen by South Korea's 1963 Committee on Education. This is the 9 pumsa () system, which divides words into nine categories called pumsa.
The 품사(品詞) pumsa, also called 씨 ssi, are themselves grouped together according to the following outline.
Content words
Substantives
(名詞) myeongsa / ireumssi (nouns) (代名詞) daemyeongsa / dae-ireumssi (pronouns) (數詞) susa / semssi (number words) Verbs (broadly speaking) (動詞) dongsa / umjikssi (action verbs) (形容詞) hyeongyongsa / geurimssi (descriptive verbs or adjectives) Modifiers (冠形詞) gwanhyeongsa / maegimssi (determiners, prenouns, or indeclinable adjectives) (副詞) busa / eojjissi (adverbs) Other content words (感歎詞) gamtansa / neukkimssi (interjections or exclamations) Function words (助詞) josa / tossi (particles or postpositions)
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:
(語尾) eomi (verb endings) (指示語) jisieo / (demonstratives) (接續語) jeopsogeo (conjunctions) (接頭語) jeopdueo (prefixes) (接尾語) jeommieo (suffixes)
Substantives
Postpositions
, josa (also called tossi) are Korean postpositions, also known as case markers. Examples include (neun, topic marker) and (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
Case clitics ( gyeok-josa) are clitics that mark the grammatical function of the word. 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 is now restricted to appearing after consonants, and a completely unrelated (suppletive) form ga appears after vowels.
nominative – i/ga for the subject, kkeseo for the subject who is respected
genitive – ui
locative – e "to" place or "in" place (e.g. "go to the hospital" or "I am in the hospital") locative 2 – eseo "at" place or "from" place (e.g. "I work at the hospital" or "I came from Korea") dative – ege "to" someone, hante "to" someone in a casual manner, kke "to" someone who is respected ablative – egeseo "from" someone, hanteseo "from" someone in a casual manner, kkeseo "from" someone who is respected accusative – eul/reul for the direct object lative – ro/euro "onto" something or "with" something (e.g. "it is moving toward the city" or "I wrote with a pen") instrumental – rosseo/eurosseo "with" something essive – roseo/euroseo being "as" something (e.g. "as a teacher, I will help you") ablative 2 – robuteo/eurobuteo something "from" source or origin (e.g. "modern cars are developed from carriages") comitative – wa/gwa, rang/irang, hago together "with" someone or something vocative – a/ya, yeo/iyeo "hey" someone being addressed