Concept of THO in Korean Grammatical Tradition

Abstract

In the article the author examines the specific concept of tho in Korean grammatical tradition basing on the analysis of the Korean scholars’ publications since the early 20th century up to now. According to Russian bilingual dictionaries, this Korean linguistic term means formal morphemes and syntactic words though various authors define its specific meaning differently. This concept can be traced back to the term of ‘empty words’ of medieval Chinese linguistics and was originally used to name Korean grammatical elements inserted into hanmun (Koreanized literary Chinese wenyan) texts for better understanding by speakers of the Korean language, which is typologically different from Chinese. This approach was partly inherited at the end of the 19th century after the transition of the literary language in Korea from hanmun to native Korean. The grammatical categories covered by tho have changed over time. Today in the DPRK, it includes any grammatical postfix formants (which in Russian Koreanology are form-building endings and suffixes) and even word-formative markers of voice. This approach follows the tradition of the last work of 1914 by Chu Sigyeong, the founder of modern Korean linguistics. The majority of the South Korean linguists, influenced to a certain extent by the Japanese language grammar, refer to postfixes of predicatives as endings, and to postfixes of nouns as particles, i.e. a syntactic part of speech. But at the same time, they do not reject completely the term tho. This interpretation follows the ideas of Choi Hyeonbae, dating back to the 20-30s of the last century. The author is inclined to support the opinion that tho is a Korean term for naming specific Korean agglutinative postfixes and considers it quite a logical approach to be viable. In conclusion, the approaches to the description of the Korean language grammar may be different, i.e. several variations are possible. However, the most important thing is that the systematic character of the description is observed, and the features of the object of the study – the Korean language of the agglutinative type – are taken into consideration. Besides, for the teaching purpose logicality and rational simplicity of grammar structure are also important if they do not contradict the language material.