Characteristics of the Modern

Korean Language. Phonetics,

Morphology and Syntax.
 Phonetics.
•Literary Korean has 40
phonemes: 19 consonants
and 21 vowels. Among
vowels there are 10
monophthongs, 10
diphthongs.
 Phonetics.
•The Korean vowel system is distinguished by its completeness and symmetry (with
remnants of syngharmonicity), a strong attack of the initial vowels, their contraction in
the middle of the word. Vowel length is optional phonemic and related to tone pitch.
•Features of consonantism of the Korean language: the presence of three rows of obstruent
consonants (voiceless consonants/ voiceless aspirated consonants/ reinforced voiceless
consonants, accompanied by the tension of the organs of articulation, reminiscent of the
laryngeal stop), which are neutralized at the end of a syllable, and a two-faced phoneme [l
/ r]; neutralization of obstruent into implosive at the end of the word and before the
voiceless consonants and, the limited use of consonants at the end of a syllable;
development of palatalization of the labial and posterior palatine consonants; variety of
alternations assimilation of consonants at the junction of syllables and words.
•Syllable structure: V, CV, VC (C), CVC (C).
•The stress in some dialects of the Korean language is musical-quantitative, in others it is
dynamic.
 Morphology.
In its structure, the Korean language is agglutinative: it is characterized by the mechanical
attachment of affixes to the unchangeable base of the word. The morphological way of
word formation is developed.
Nouns are distinguished by the richness of case forms, the grammatical category of
refinement, and the absence of grammatical gender; in demonstrative pronouns, spatial
relationships are distinguished; numerals have two counting systems - Korean and
Chinese; counting words also are used. Predicatives - verbs and adjectives - have no
person, number or gender; verbs are inherent in the forms of the final predicate, the
category of orientation.
The morphological structure of a word may contain a root, stem, affixes (prefixes are only
derivational, suffixes are also inflectional), a connecting morpheme and inflections (in
predicatives).
 Morphology.
•Nouns, pronouns, numerals do not have a category of grammatical gender. The animate
/ inanimate category overlaps with the animate and inanimate category. The opposition
between singularity and plurality is irrelevant; the name reflects the unity of the whole
and the part.
•The declension includes 9 simple cases: basic (which has no exponent and coincides
with the stem or root of the word), nominative (which has specific markers in Korean),
genitive, accusative, dative, locative, instrumental, comitative case, vocative and many
compound cases. In spoken language, many cases can be abbreviated or omitted.
•Personal pronouns are poorly developed; Indicators differ in the degree of distance
from the speaker. There are no relative pronouns.
•Numerals have two rows: from 1 to 99 - actually Korean, formed by adding bases, and
Chinese. From 100 onwards - there are only Chinese ones.
 Morphology.
•The most advanced and complex grammatical class of words in Korean is predicative, which
includes verbs and predicative adjectives. Distinguish between middle and final grammatical forms
of predicatives.
•The system of times includes the present, 2 past and 2 future. The category of person in modern
Korean is almost not expressed grammatically. The category of the form of politeness is
characteristic of predicatives.
•The voice category is not common to all verbs. Specific and modal values are transferred
analytically. A feature of predicatives is the development of contracted forms. Positional forms of
predicatives (more than 50 conjugated and non-conjugated gerunds, participles, 3 infinitives) are
used as a means of syntactic communication between sentences, compensating for the scarcity of
the range of conjunctions.
•Immutable forms of adjectives are sometimes distinguished into a special part of speech -
attributives. In the transmission of grammatical meanings, the role of service words is great
(postpositions, counting words, conjunctions and union words, auxiliaries, modals, particles etc.).
 Syntax.
•Word order: SOP (subject - object - predicate).
•The dependent member of the sentence always precedes the
main one. Analytical constructs are common.
•Syntactic communication is carried out using postpositions,
particles, participial and infinitive forms, predicatives.
•For the ancient Korean language, the nominal sentence was
typical, for the modern one - the predicative one.