Korean and the Korean dialects

Abstract

This chapter presents a structural overview of contemporary Korean. Following a brief introduction to the speakers, writing systems, and previous scholarship, the main body surveys the following six areas. Historical connections cover the Korean-Japanese and Korean-Altaic hypotheses, dialectal situation, and standardization, and contacts with Chinese, Japanese, and English. The phonology presents the phoneme inventory, a set of rules mapping morphophonemic to phonetic representations, and suprasegmental features. The morphology discusses lexical classification, inflection, and derivation. The syntax covers the word order, noun and verb phrases, main and satellite clauses, causative / passive constructions, and serial (converb) and auxiliary constructions. The lexicon discusses the layers of native terms, Sino-Korean words, and loanwords. Finally, the dialectal variation describes the formation and characteristics of seven dialectal zones and sociopolitical dialectal division between the two Koreas.