The Study on the Principles of Selecting Korean Particle 'Ka' and 'Nun' Using Korean-English Parallel Corpus

한영 병렬 말뭉치를 이용한 한국어 조사 '가'와 '는'의 선택 원리 연구

This study aims to research into the meaning of Korean particle 'ka' and 'nun' inductively by examining the correspondences of those particles and English articles on the Korean-English parallel corpus. The correspondences were checked in three ways: semantically, syntactically and pragmatically. This study found that when the semantic or syntactic tier is not salient, the pragmatic tier is activated and particles are selected according to the pragmatic elements such as the amount of information or the change of topic. However, if the meaning of the particles is salient or if there is any syntactic motive, particles are selected in accordance with the semantic or syntactic elements. Former studies which focused on one of those three tiers cannot properly explain such correspondences on the Korean-English parallel corpus. This study shows that semantic, syntactic and pragmatic tiers hierarchically affect the selection of a particle and that the selection process is also related to speaker's intention. This dimensional analysis of particles is expected to contribute to theoretical studies and applied studies like Korean language education as well.