Korean Grammar - Classification of Words

Classification of Words

Korean grammarians have been classifying Korean words to parts of speech for centuries, but the modern standard is the one taught in public schools, chosen by South Korea's 1963 Committee on Education. This is the 9 pumsa (9 품사) system, which divides words into nine categories called pumsa.

The pumsa are themselves grouped together according to the following chart.

• Content words
  • Substantives
    • 명사 myeongsa (nouns)
    • 대명사 daemyeongsa (pronouns)
    • 수사 susa (number words)
  • Verbs (broadly speaking)
    • 동사 dongsa (action verbs)
    • 형용사 hyeongyongsa (descriptive verbs or adjectives)
  • Modifiers
    • 관형사 gwanhyeongsa (determiners, prenouns, or indeclinable adjectives)
    • 부사 busa (adverbs)
  • Other content words
    • 감탄사 gamtansa (interjections or exclamations)
• Function words
  • 조사 josa (particles or postpositions)

Both cardinal and ordinal numbers are grouped into their own part of speech. Descriptive verbs and action verbs are classified separately despite sharing essentially the same conjugation. Verb endings constitute a large and rich class of morphemes, indicating such things in a sentence as tense, mood, aspect, speech level (of which there are 7 in Korean), and honorifics. Prefixes and suffixes are numerous, partly because Korean is an agglutinative language.

There are also various other important classes of words and morphemes that are not generally classified among the pumsa. 5 other major classes of words or morphemes are:

• 어미 eomi (verb endings)
• 지시어 jisieo (demonstratives)
• 접속어 jeopsogeo (conjunctions)
• 접두어 jeopdueo (prefixes)
• 접미어 jeommieo (suffixes)