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초록

This paper aims to examine how ‘morpheme’ has been used in describing Korean language. In Korean phonology, ‘morpheme’ is frequently needed to describe phonological phenomena. When underlying forms are determined, they deal with morphemes. But we do not need morphemes to determine underlying forms by synchronic phonological rules because they become similar to syntactic atoms. Phonology can be concretely related to syntax. Although we understand morphology as a branch to generate words from morphemes, we do not need to rely on the concept of ‘morpheme’. Sometimes it becomes an obstacle to understand morphological phenomena and classification of morphemes is mixed with word classes. Both Stem and root are not morphemes. Even though affixes and endings correspond to morphemes, we do not need the word ‘concept’ for them as we do not need it for stems and roots. Syntax does not need the concept of ‘morpheme’ because it deals with syntactic units. But it has been used in syntactic description for the reason that JO-SAs(case markers and delimiters) and endings correspond to morphemes. But, in syntax, it does not necessary to use the word ‘morpheme’ because it is possible to analyse some JO-SAs and endings to more than two morphemes. Korean orthography relies on the concept ‘morpheme’. A morpheme should be written as a single form in principle. If a morpheme has irregular allomorphs, they are written as themselves. But the rules of Korean orthography do not include the word ‘morpheme’. They do not state definitely about how to write morphemes when they have more than two syllables. Therefore some dictionary writes affixes by syllables as if they consist of two units. If they are composed of two morphemes, we have affixes with two morphemes. As discussed so far, the concept have some problems. Therefore some students, especially middle schools students have difficulty in understanding it. We suggest that the concept ‘morpheme’ should be restricted to analyze from the theoretical and grammar educational viewpoint.

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