A Semantic Analysis Of The Grammatical Morpheme '-ESS-'on The Korean Language

Normally, we consider the grammatical meaning of'-ess-'of the korean language to express the past tense, but not all sentences containing '-ess-' necessarily follow this rule. Sometimes it implies the present tense. This shows that the meaning of the grammatical morpheme '-ess-' is not so simple.In this paper, the basic meaning of the grammatical morpheme '-ess-' in the korean language will be clarified through a combination of the '-ess-' and declinable words, and also in relationship to the semantic aspect.In order to find out the basic meaning, verbs were classified into process verbs and completion verbs; completion verbs were further classified into instant verbs and non- instantaneous verbs. In addition, adjectives were classified into property adjectives, psychological adjectives and comparative adjectives. The meaning of the morpheme '-ess-' was therefore analyzed according to this classification of various verbs and adjectives.When verbs are combined with '-ess-' there are two different meanings. One expresses the past tense when combined with process verbs and the other expresses the perfect tense when combined with completion verbs. Furthermore,'-ess-' expresses the past tense when combined with property adjectives, psychological adjectives and comparative adjectives. In other words,'-ess-' can express both the past and perfect tense when it is combined with the preceding declinable words. So when the morpheme '-ess-' meets declinable words it can be '-ess1-' or '-ess2-'. This means that two'-ess-' 's are homonym form. Thus, we can further reason out the composition of '-essess-,' which is constructed by '-ess1ess2-.' It means pluperfect, Concentres and so on. Thus, one can explain the complex meaning of '-essess-' only through such a composition analysis.