Korean And English, The Body Of Comparative Research

On the basis of previous studies by other scholars, this paper aims at describing and exploring the similarities and differences between Korean and English tense and aspect. Korean and English tense and aspect will be classified structurally and semantically, their features and functions will be compared synchronically and then interpreted semantically, pragmatically and psycholinguistically. It explores in details the two special Korean tense and aspect, relative tense and prospective aspect, and their correspondent expressions in English.It falls into six parts: introduction, three main parts, conclusion and references. Chapter Two discusses the subjective and objective relatioris among time, language and reality, followed by specific classification of Korean and English tense and aspect.Chapter Three and Four describe and compare Korean and English tense and aspect structurally and semantically, and then interpret their similarities and differences. Korean absolute tenses are expressed by prefinal tense morphemes, relative tenses are expressed by Kwanhyong suffixes and aspects by auxiliary conjunctions and auxiliary verbs, which have no varieties. English tenses and aspects are expressed by inflectional tense morphemes, which vary according to person and number of the subject.Korean and English tense and aspect interrelate semantically and pragmatically, which indicates the neutralization among them. Korean and English present tense and past tense can express present, past and future in special context. Korean present tense can mean progressive and past tense means perfect, while English progressive can mean future. Both Korean and English allow the co-occurrence of present tense and past tense, or past tense and past progressive. This kind of inconsistency between forms and meanings proves the subjectivity and mental features of human beings during communication as well as the duality of tense and aspect, subjectivity and objectivity.Unlike English, Korean has relative tense and prospective aspect. Relative tense is expressed by '-n', '-ton', '-n+n' and '-1' corresponding to non-finite verb phrases, preposition phrases or relative clauses in English. Prospective aspect is expressed by '-ke ha-', '-dorok ha-', '-ke dye-"-goja ha-', 'ryeoko ha-' corresponding to causatives, passives or some future expressions in English.English is quite different from Korean in that its present tense, past tense, present progressive, past progressive and future progressive can express speaker's politeness and indirectness. These timeless expressions indicate mental distance between speaker and listener, which enables polite and less aggressive communication to take place.