Zur Klassifikation der Wortarten im Koreanischen

The present paper deals with a classification of the parts of speech of the Korean language giving priority to syntactico-functional and distributional criteria, which is considered as useful for the purpose of foreign language teaching. Primary syntactic functions of the different word classes have been determined and the question of conversion (change of parts of speech) as well as entering of equivocal (homonymous) words or word forms, both of the same origin, into different word classes according to their different syntactic features has been discussed. Furthermore, correlations between syntactically defined word classes and their morphological features have been specified. As first step, lexical items have been divided into word classes having sentence value and not having sentence value, respectively. As second step, word classes lacking sentence value have been divided into those capable of functioning as an independent member of sentence and those functioning mainly adjunctionally as constituent of a member of sentence, the former as to their primary or prevailing syntactic functions (i.o. predicates, „actants“, „circonstants“) being subdivided into verbs, nouns and adverbs, respectively, and the latter consisting in adjectives (modifiers). Word classes endowed with sentence value consist of interjections and modal words.Peer Reviewe