Reconsideration of Korean Benefactive Expressions in Foreign Language Teaching Contexts

Abstract

This article examines the presentations of the Korean benefactive expression -e/a cwuta in four Korean-as-a-foreign-language textbooks and provides an account for expressing the benefactive meaning by reviewing a wide range of data considered in the literature as well as the corpus made and available by the National Institute of the Korean Language. The results of the analysis of the corpus in the spoken Korean language suggest a reconsideration of the presentations of the benefactive form in the Korean language textbooks, because it is found that there is a gap between what is conveyed in the textbooks and real-life practice.