Adjectivisation (Korean)

In Korean, verbs (both descriptive and action) are fitted to an adnomial suffix to form non–sentence-terminal adjectives.

-(으)ㄴ

Realis (past) adnomial suffix for verbal or adjectival stems.

• Use -ㄴ after stems ending in vowels, or after ㄹ, in which case the ㄹ is dropped.

-는

Realis present adnomial suffix for verbal stems.The weirdo verbs 있다 and 없다 use -는, and their neighbour -이다 uses -ㄴ.

-(으)ㄹ

Irrealis future adnomial suffix for verbal and adjectival stems.

Examples using descriptive verbs

예쁘다

to be beautiful (descriptive verb in dictionary form)

예쁜

beautiful (descriptive verb in adjective form)

예쁜 여자

a beautiful woman

이상하다

to be strange (descriptive verb in dictionary form)

이상한

strange (descriptive verb in adjective form)

이상한 생각

a strange thought

Some example sentences:

더 작은 바지 있어요?

Do you have smaller pants?

나쁜 사람이에요.

They are a bad person.

Examples using action verbs

And of course, we can play the same game with action verbs, although with the additional options for expressing tense:I don't think there's much of a syntactic difference between action verbs and descriptive verbs. It's less that future-tense adjectives are forbidden, and more that they are semantically nonsensical.

노래하다

to sing (action verb in dictionary form)

노래한

singy, singingUnsurprisingly, these "attributive verbs" are a bit awkward to translate into English. (action verb in past adnomial form)

노래하는

singy, singing (action verb in present adnomial form)

노래할

singy, singing (action verb in future adnomial form)

노래한 사람

person who was singing

노래하는 사람

person who is singing, person who sings

노래할 사람

person who will sing

While that example with 노래하다 is fairly straightforward, action verbs have a tendency to come out ambiguous post-adjectivisation.

좋아하는 책

book that I like

좋아하는 책

book that likes [something]

Of course, the latter phrase will almost never make sense, so we can eliminate it. But it's just an example }:P. As is common in Korean, context will be made to do all that it can.

Differences with English

Unlike in English, the Korean adnomial form should never be used with the copula -이다, which only works for nouns.

❌ 사과 맛있이에요.

apples are delicious

✅ 사과 맛있어요.

apples are delicious

If you find yourself wanting to do this, you almost certainly should simply use the descriptive verb form.I.e., the sentence-final form.

References

• [cite:@talktomeinkorean2015talka]