Robert M.

Kim KOR631

Grammaticalization process of incomplete verb -uyhata/uyhamyen

Introduction This paper will address the grammaticalization process of a Korean verb uyhamyen() which derived from Chinese root uy(, ) with the meaning of to lean on or rely on that has been widely used in contextual environment and often by newspaper articles to reinforce the authenticity of the source of information which they quoted/borrowed from. We also will look at learning Sino-Korean and discuss its academic implications.

History revisited Because of geographical proximity, the Korean culture and language has been deeply influenced by that of China and Japan. The first account of Korean contact with Chinese in their historical is from the book of Gunzi () - written in seventh century B.C. during Qi() dynasty that briefly mentions trade relationship with Old Joseon Kingdom. In this sense, we can safely presume the indigenous Korean people already had knowledge of Chinese language well before Old Joseon period to facilitate communications between two countries. It is also commonly accepted fact that Chinese culture was more advanced than that of Korean or any other countries in the region during the ancient and classical period which may explains the reason why so many Chinese influenced lexicons in Korean vocabulary that are still being used. Later this trend is caught up by Japanese influence, a country that first opened their ports to western power and adopted new ways of thinking. Japanese scholars quickly translated many scholarly texts from the west - especially of Netherlands - and created a new lexical term that identifies almost all of the western ideas borrowed in their own language. Although Japanese did create new words using their own language, Japan was still historically heavily influenced by China, thus explains why those new lexicons created by Japanese are so similar to that of conventional Chinese words. During the last days of Joseon dynasty and toward the end of Korean Empire, influx of Japanesetranslated western literatures and scientific articles introduced by those who studied in Japan began to influence Korean vocabulary. Moreover, during the Japanese occupation of the peninsula, the Japanese influenced use of the language and Sino-Japanese lexicons slowly began to flood pool of Korean vocabularies.

Such is the case for usage of the term 'uyhamyen' as argued by some that it is of the Japanese origin. In Japan, a similar term '' are as commonly used as 'uyhamyen' itself as below. . It will be carried out 'by(according to)' the rules. According to Sohn(2001), the Sino-Korean words 'tend to be more formal and abstract, and thus occasionally sound more prestigious and sometimes even pedantic.' Also noted that the most Sino-Korean words, phrases and even clauses function as nouns in Korean sentences while a few of them are used as adverbs as cuk-si (immediately) or sim-ci-e (even).

Current usage statistics The Korean vocabulary is consists of 35% native words and affixes, and the Sino-Korean (including Sino-Japanese originated) words takes as much as 60% of the total Korean lexicon. The loan words are about 5% when the research was conducted (Sohn, 2001). To verify the fact that the term 'uyhamyen' which we suggested earlier that was widely used in news articles, the online research was conducted targeting some of the newspapers that represent current major/popular media dating from June of 2001 to April of 2012. Representing politically more conservative news media, the Chosun Ilbo lists number of articles that contains 'uyhamyen' as 9,751, Joongang Ilbo 9,910 and considered as politically neutral Hankook Ilbo 2,505. Kyunghyang Shinmun, a newspapers agency that represent more politically progressive groups had 1,759 articles with the term 'uyhamyen', and likewise Hankyoreh had 1,423 article during the same period - which is significantly less than newspapers that are more inclined toward the conservative side. On the other hand, when we looked for the native Korean term with a similar meaning t'alumyen(), the Chosun Ilbo had 446,902 articles, and Joongang Ilbo reported 624,323, and Hankook Ilbo had 214,038 articles. The progressive side represented by Hankyoreh had 45,569 articles with the term 't'alumyen', whereas Kyunghyang Shinmun had 67,278 articles. For the reference, we searched for the English equivalent 'according to' from the New York Times, which had 2.06 million articles during the same period. From the brief look at the numbers we can see the pattern of conservative newspapers do not hesitate to use authoritative Sino-Korean term 'uyhamyen' more than progressive side which often tends to show nationalistic propensity.

Politically progressively inclined newspapers used native equivalent term 't'alumyen' significantly more often than Sino-Korean derived 'uyhamyen'. uyhamyen Chosun Ilbo () Joongang Ilbo () Hankook Ilbo () Kyunghyang Shinmun () Hankyoreh ( ) 9,751 9,910 2,505 1,759 1,423 t'alumyen 446,902 624,323 214,038 67,278 45,569

However the newly found data shows that regardless of political nature, all of the surveyed news media generally tends to move toward using native Korean term as much as possible. Teaching method for Sino-Korean derived affixal terms discussed According to Cho(2005), even though the current Korean language education is moving toward in favoring communication based system instead of grammatical approach, understanding the meaning of terms originated from Chinese characters are equally important. This is especially true for the Korean language learners from the region of strong Chinese influence and knowledge of Chinese characters. For example, Sino-Korean roots prefixed to native Korean conjunctives, explaining the meaning of the root can greatly enhance the understanding of the phrase itself as in '-lo inhan' where 'in' is from the Chinese character '' with the meaning 'cause' or 'resulted from.' Likewise the Sino-Korean incomplete verb 'uyhamyen' can be also explained with help of Chinese root noun '' defined as 'to lean on' or 'to depend on', then 'uyhamyen' can be described as similar in usage as English preposition 'according to'. From the dictionary definition, the term 'uyhamyen' is combination of noun 'uy' and inflexed form of the verb 'hata' which has following meanings. Cause: be due to; be owing to Dependence: depend on; be dependent on Basis/ground: be based on; be founded on mean/measure: appeal to; use; have recourse to.

Grammaticalization process of 'uyhamyen' explained With the dictionary definition of 'uyhamyen' cleared out, we can integrate one of the grammaticalizational rule called 'cline' Hopper(2003) defines the term 'cline' as 'metaphor for the empirical observation that crosslinguistically forms tend to undergo the same kinds of changes or have similar sets of relationships in similar order(Hopper, p.6).' Also, as noted 'the forms do not shift abruptly from one category to another, but go through a series of small transitions' brings up a root term 'uykehata ()' which is original form for 'uyhamyen'. 'uykehata' means 'based on a certain fact, or principle' which has very similar meaning as 'uyhada' - a dictionary form for the 'uyhamyen'. For example, Hooper(2003) presents a lexical noun such as 'back' which is used to describe a dorsal side of the body now also doubles the meaning denoting spatial relationship against 'front' and is prone to become an adverb and perhaps eventually a preposition and even a case affix. Thus we suggest a 'cline of grammaticality' of content item > grammatical word > clitic > inflectional affix which can be also applied to Korean incomplete verb 'uyhamyen' a Chinese lexical item '' that simply means 'to lean on' combines with another lexicon '' to form a new grammatical word 'uyke.' After 'uyke' is combined with verb 'hata(which means 'do')' to form 'uykehata' then 'ke' is dropped altogether in 'uyhamyen' to form one might call pseudo or emerging category of the sentence element while 'uy' loses original lexical meaning nor usage of 'to lean on' but just used for the quotation.

Closing The emphasis on educating young people with native Korean-only method slowly losing ground and learning Chinese is becoming a new trend in second language study with emergence of China as notable figure in the far east. But not only because China is becoming super-power or what not, we cannot stress enough importance on learning Chinese characters because our language is strongly rooted from borrowed Chinese characters and if we do not understand the meaning it stands behind, we simply don't have ways to explain why or how such terms as 'uyhamyeon' is came to existence. This irony where natives do not fully understand the language they use on daily basis poses serious problem for the future generations. A case of Vietnam is one example we should look at before dismissing act of learning 'Chinese'

characters - which we should take in as part of our legacy from the ancestors - and its role in grammatical process of Korean terms. At least 60% of Vietnamese stock lexicon are based on Chinese but they do not use Chinese characters any more but adopted IPA style of written language which only shows how the language is written as it is phonetically produced. It should be interesting to find out how their linguistics develop with phonetic alphabets only. In this study, we have found out not only grammatical process to explain the incomplete verb 'uyhamyeon' but we also had a chance to look back and analyze how we use language as it is now based on the historical account and through current usage in current journalistic point of view. We do witnessed that usage of Sino-Korean 'uyhamyeon' is undergoing decreasing trend even among print medias albeit we almost never use the term in vernacular setting. However such a challenge to understand subtle meaning changes in grammar are also important to ordinary lives not because simply we can, but to truly understand our heritage in history and apply them to our daily lives because knowing what it is and not knowing but just using what is given to makes world of difference in realizing the essence of life.

References Sohn, H.-M. (2001). The Korean Language. New York, Cambridge University Press. Hopper, P. J. and E. C. Traugott (2003). Grammaticalization. New York, Cambridge University Press. Cho, H. (2005). "Grammaticalization and Korean Sentence Structure." Journal of Education Development 21(1): 195 - 211.