If I had received a research grant to conduct a linguistic study on Korean and culture, I would want to investigate where the honorifics of the language derived from. Honorifics consists of four different particles that are semantically the same but are used to express respect toward the addressee. One basic rule of Korean honorifics is ‘making oneself lower’ where the speaker cannot use honorific forms him/herself, but rather can use humble forms to make him/herself lower (Han, 2002). Growing up in America, I never had to change the words I spoke depending on my relationship with the person or their age. So, the whole idea of having a completely different way of speaking towards a certain demographic is still fascinating to me.
There would be a number of different areas I would have to cover to investigate my topic. For starters, I would look at the different structural components and into the formal syntax of Korean. Although the rules and principles of honorifics are fairly clear, in order to properly observe it, I need to investigate an explanation for it. The Korean honorific system has four components: predicate endings—i.e., speech levels—, honorific particles, lexical markers, and forms of address (Ku, 2014). Generally, the speaker is required to mark his/her sentence with some honorific morpheme, typically on the verb, when the addressee is higher than the speaker in social status (Kim, 2010). Word trees would be highly valuable in demonstrating the applications of different honorific markers since there are different applications of honorific markers depending on the lexical characteristic. For instance, placement of particles varies for honorific pronouns and nouns, in that, an honorific suffix can be added to many kinship terms to make them honorific. Additionally, the form varies depending on whether the morpheme, to which the suffix is attached, ends with a consonant or a vowel (Ku, 2014). In another example, lexical markers are divided into subject honorifics and object honorifics, so the purpose of the markers is to index the relationship between the speaker and address (Ku, 2014). As such, due to all the rules regarding morphemes and syntax, it’d be useful to demonstrate my findings using word trees to be able to distinguish the different honorific particles purposes more clearly. This sort of explanation was also used throughout literature in linguistic papers—as I have found in the papers of my references.
After I had researched and understood the syntax and its structural components, I would investigate it evolutionarily to understand more about the history of the Korean language, determine if Korean ancestors also used honorifics, discover where it originated from, and track its developmental changes. Additionally, I would to look into the cultural history of Korea and how it has progressed over time. More specifically, I would look into how Confucianism became ingrained into Korean culture as it predates much of its culture today. I would also investigate if different dialects apply honorifics in a different manner as they consist of different vocabulary and lexical applications. Hence, by starting with the technical aspect of honorifics in Korean linguistics, I’d be able to compare how it had come to change throughout the course of history.
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