The parts of speech in Korean Plural Marker “들 /teul/ (many)”

Abstract

The objective of this article is to research the function of the marker 들 /teul/ (many). This word appears in the Standard Korean Dictionary, defining this marker as an affix, independent noun, and postpositional particle. The word unit appears in the form of postpositional particle and independent noun, 들 /teul/ (many), without a hyphen; however, if it is an affix, appears with a hyphen. This article applies a collection of sample sentences from the corpus of the Center for Digital Humanities and the research focuses on finding the answer of the functions for the marker 들 /teul/ (many). The result shows that first, the feature of 들 /teul/ (many) matches an independent noun by simply placing it adjacent to the predicate part at the end of the sentence. Second, considering the function of 들 /teul/ (many) as a postpositional particle, the features of this marker are very similar to a particle because it can be placed adjacent to various types of words to create plurality. Third, in the case of 들 /teul/ (many) being an affix, the researcher disagrees with this function, as 들 /teul/ (many) can be added to or omitted from sentences; this marker does not have the word-building feature of other affixes.