9 The Adjective Class in Korean 241Korean appears to be close to the Dyirbal type as far as the native stock is con-
cerned. When SK words are included, Korean extensively involves both the Eng-
lish and Dyirbal types.
5 Conclusion
Let us sum up the typological characteristics of Korean adjectives. First, Korean is
a language with a large adjective class. Monomorphemic adjectives form a closed
set of native words, while derived adjectives, an open class, are from the native,
SK, and loan stocks. Secondly, the semantic content of Korean adjectives ranges
over all the semantic types proposed by Dixon, except the NUMERAL type, which
does not share grammatical functions with adjectives and thus constitutes a sep-
arate word class. Thirdly, Korean belongs to the type in which adjectives are verb-
like, functioning as intransitive predicates, and not-noun-like, not functioning as
copula complements. It also belongs to the group in which adjectives function as
modifier to the head only through relativization. Fourthly, although Korean adjec-
tives are verb-like, there are extensive significant morphosyntactic differences be-
tween the class of adjectives and the class of verbs that significantly warrant the
division between the two word classes. Fifthly, when an adjective takes a theme
object, that object is in the nominative case, generating a double nominative con-
struction. This is particularly the case with sensory adjectives taking an object and
existential adjectives denoting possession. Finally, in the native stock, there is con-
siderable semantic overlap between verbs and adjectives but not between nouns
and adjectives. If the SK stock is also taken into account, there is great semantic
overlap among nouns, verbs, and adjectives.
References
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MARTIN, S. E. 1992. A reference grammar of Korean. Rutland and Tokyo: Turtle.
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SOHN, HO-MIN. 1999. The Korean language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Yu, HYON-GYONG.1998. Kwuke Hyengyongsa Yenkwu (A Study of Korean Adjectives). Seoul:
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