Korean : A Linguistic Introduction

The 'Korean wave' in music and film and Korea's rise as an economic power have boosted the popularity of Korean language study worldwide. This book provides an up-to-date introduction to the sound, structure, and history of Korean, with examples in Korean hangul script for students at any level of study, from undergraduate to advanced.

In this accessible survey, two leading specialists introduce a broad range of topics in Korean linguistics, including the general historical background of the language, its phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and sociolinguistics, and the interfaces between those areas. Expertly written and drawing on the authors'' many years of experience, the book answers questions such as what languages is Korean related to, what is unique about the Korean sound system, and how are ''subject'' and ''topic'' distinguished in Korean. It guides the student through the major issues in Korean linguistics in a theory-neutral way, at the same time discussing the latest research on the language, and exploring its unique writing system, which has long been a topic of interest to linguists and to those interested in writing systems in general. It is the ideal introduction for students both at the beginning of their studies, and at a more advanced level.