Abstract
It is well accepted that the meaning of English simple past is represented by the suffix ess in Korean. This suffix is also proposed to represent the meaning of English present perfect. By some others, however, the perfect meaning is argued to come from sources other than ess. In this context, the main purpose of this paper is to reinvestigate the meaning of ess and to reconsider the sources of the perfect meaning of Korean. It will be reconfirmed that the perfect meaning is not derived from the ambiguity of ess, but from some other elements in the sentence. It will be proposed that unlike other languages such as English and French, Korean has a simple past tense only, and no perfect aspect. In Korean, the past tense marker ess acquires the ‘current relevance’ from the context as an implicature or from an adverbial as part of explicit meaning. Furthermore, the marked form essess is used in order to eliminate the current relevance of the situation
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