The Referential Structure of a Korean Folktale : The Story of Shim Chung

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to study one of three basic linguistic hierarchies-the referential hierarchy- of a Korean folktale, called the Story of Shim Chung_ The story is very well known to most speakers of Korean, who grow up hearing and reading numerous versions of it As a native speaker of the language, I here analyze the referential structure of the story, making explicit some of the knowledge which is implicit in the story, e.g., cultural, social, and religious knowledge. The version of the story used here is a written one included in a collection of folktales for children. The author of the present version notes that the story originates from 400-500 years ago.