현대국어의 어미 및 문법 패턴의 계량언어학적 연구(上)

Abstract

In this paper, I will present a quantitative analysis of the frequency and ranking of the following items in modem Korean: (1) prefinal and final endings (the latter are used as conclusive morphemes or non-conclusive morphemes), and (2) the grammatical patterns and adverbial phrases that are connected with these sentential adverbs. Oddly, there is no research to date on the frequency of use of both suffixes and grammatical patterns. In the 1956 survey conducted by the Ministry of Education entitled "A Survey of Word Frequency in Korean" only basic form of verbal endings were surveyed. In 1997, I conducted the first survey of agglutinating suffixes(e.g., conclusive morphemes and non-conclusive morphemes), entitled "Quantitative Research on Verbal Morphemes in Modem Korean" (Lee 1997). Since then I have not been able to expand this research to a large corpus but this first pilot study already showed a valuable index such as order of frequency. A couple of others' studies on the frequency of suffixes have been reported based on their larger corpus but those of grammatical patterns not yet done by others. The above findings are useful in the following ways: First, they are instructive in developing a rational basis for pedagogical syllabi and materials in teaching Korean as a foreign or a second language. They are also useful in analyzing the order of presentation of suffixes and structures in existing materials for learners of Korean. This information is useful in improving these materials and in developing new materials. Second, the findings can also be applied to analyzing the order of presentation of morphemes in elementary Korean materials for children in Korea. As with materials for foreign learners of Korean, this information is useful in developing a natural and pedagogically effective ordering of agglutinating verbal morphemes. Third, the findings are relevant to machine translation (particularly English-Korean and Japanese-Korean) because they provide information on which Korean expressions are more preferable in translation. Machine translation, a field that has emerged from computer engineering, needs accurate linguistic information to succeed and the linguistic information, which is based on research methods from natural science, in this paper can help build a bridge from the humanities to engineering.