The The Combination of Defective Nouns with Particles in Korean

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the characteristics of defective nouns, the combinatory patterns between defective nouns and particles in Korean, and the syntactic functions of defective noun–particle constructions in Korean sentences. A total of 228 nouns that exhibit restrictions in particle attachment were collected from the Standard Korean Language Dictionary. These were classified as 222 common nouns and 6 bound nouns. Example sentences were gathered from the Standard Korean Language Dictionary and the corpus of the Research Institute of Korean Studies, Korea University. Data were analyzed as follows.

The results were as follows: 1) Defective nouns fall into three types: native Korean words, Sino Korean words, and hybrid words. Most defective nouns were Sino Korean, some of which were four character idioms, whereas most native Korean defective nouns were compound words, 2) Thirteen patterns of co occurrence between defective nouns and Korean particles were observed. Listed in descending order of frequency, they were: 에, 로, 의, 에도, 이나, 이다, 은, 가, 를, 로부터, 에는, 도, and 만큼., 3) Korean particles in these constructions can be categorized into two types: case particles and auxiliary particles. The case particles, of which there were eight, can be classified by their grammatical functions when combined with defective nouns as follows: 에, 로, 로부터, and 에는 form adverbial phrases; 의 functions as a noun modifier; 가 functions as a subject marker; 를 functions as an object marker; and 이다 functions as a predicate marker. When 이다 combines with the ending -면 to form 이면, the defective noun functions as an adverbial phrase. The auxiliary particles, of which there were five, were 은, 도, 만큼, 나, and 에도. When combined with defective nouns, these auxiliary particles serve to emphasize or reinforce the meaning of the sentence.