Study on ‘Reason․Cause’ Functional Meaning Words for Korean Language Education

This study classified grammatical forms which have functions of ‘reason․cause’ into general grammatical form and special grammatical form based on syntactic and semantic restrictions of leading sentences. First, whereas ‘-아/어서’ express objective causes, ‘-(으)니까’ expresses subjective reasons naturally. And differently from ‘-아/어서’, ‘-(으)니까’ can be used in past tenses, imperative or propositive sentences. In the combination with emotive adjectives, ‘-(으)니까’ seems to be awkward while ‘-아/어서’ seems to be natural. Lastly, in the conversation of excuse and justification of subject of the first person for questions, ‘reason․cause’ constructions by ‘-(으)니까’ are solecistic. Second, in case when ‘reason’ or ‘cause’ are clearly past situation, ‘-아/어서’, ‘-(으)니까’ and ‘-기 때문에’ are discriminated and ‘-(으)니까’ and ‘-기 때문에’ show different aspects in realization of imperative sentences and propositive sentences. Third, ‘-아/어서’, ‘-(으)니까’ and ‘-(으)므로’ have syntactic discrimination when they are combined with past tense. In addition, ‘-아/어서’ and ‘-(으)므로’ cannot be used in the expression of propositive sentence whereas ‘-(으)니까’ can. Fourth, ‘-거든요’ and ‘-잖아요’ which are terminative endings of ‘reason․cause’ have difference in level of cognition on reason or cause between a narrator and a listener. In other words, the former confirms what the other party does not know whereas the latter confirms what the other party knows.