KJCKorea
Journal Central

This study considers the aspects and characteristics of Korean affixation classified by origin. For this study, affixes of Korean native words and affixes of Chinese words are extracted from <The standard Korean dictionary> and three other grammars, and the productive foreign words are selected from new coinage and internet search. Here is the summary. First, the most typical grammaticalization, which lexical morphemes become grammatical ones, appears in affixation of Korean native words. Modifiers like nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adnominals are affixed, and grammatical morphemes like postpositions and endings are affixed, too. Second, in the case of the chinese words, the words with lexical meaning are mostly affixed. Prefixes are usually affixed from predicates, and suffixes are usually affixed from substantives. This has something to do with the restrictive function of prefixes and the fact that the most of the chinese suffix derivation is from nouns. Some chinese expletives became Korean affixes, but the number is few. Some western loanword affixes are used as Korean affixes as they are. Foreign pronouns are affixed as Korean prefixes and foreign nouns are affixed as Korean suffixes. So these affixation creates a lot of new words. Some of the noun affixation expands their territory, keeping their relationship with similar Chinese affixes. Foreign predicates become Korean affixes, and mostly foreign adjectives are changed into Korean prefixes. Lastly, affixation of foreign words are created by disassembling a word and making one of the disconnected roots into Korean affix. In this case, either the head or tail of the words can be used as affixes. Some of the affixes are not settled as Korean yet, but the productivity is increasing.

접사화(affixation), 문법화(grammaticalization), 실질어(lexical morphemes), 기능어(grammatical morphemes), 고유어(Korean native words), 한자어(Chines words), 서양 외래어(western loanwords), 신어 형성(formation of new words), 생산성(productivity), 파생(word derivation)