A Comparative Study on the Aspectual Classification of Korean and Japanese Verbs in Relation to '-ess-' '-essess-' in Korean and 'sudeni' in Japanese

This paper deals with an aspectual classification of Korean and Japanese verbs based on Vendler (1967). Both of Korean and Japanese verbs are classified into 12 distinctive aspectual categories by their restrictions on time adverbials, progressive tenses and logical entailments. A well-established aspectual verb classes provide us not only with a better understanding of both languages, but also with an explicit explanation concerning some grammatical phenomena relevant to time. The aspectual classes of Korean verbs clarify the ambiguous semantic functions of so called Korean tense forms ‘-ess-‘ and ‘-essess-‘, while those of Japanese verbs elucidate the semantic functions of ‘sudeni’, the equivalent of ‘already’ in English, when it occurs with a variety of verbs in sentences.