Appendix:Middle Korean verbs

This appendix is on the inflectional paradigms of mid-fifteenth-century Middle Korean verbs and adjectives, henceforth referred to as "verbs" for convenience's sake (note that Korean adjectives behave as a subset of verbs).

All romanizations are in the.

Pitch assignment principles
Middle Korean verbal pitch is determined by three intertwining factors: the pitch of the verb stem, the pitch of the suffixes, and a simple tone sandhi rule.

Stem pitch
For the purposes of verbal pitch, the verb stem has up to three allomorphs, depending on the accentual class. Korean verb stems cannot appear without at least one suffix, and the allomorph taken depends on which of the following three categories the immediately subsequent suffix falls into:


 * 1) Consonant-initial suffixes.
 * The example used in this page is.
 * 1) Non-minimal vowel -initial suffixes.
 * The example used in this page is -아〮/어〮.
 * 1) Minimal vowel -initial suffixes. (Note that -(ᄋᆞ/으)시〮 behaves atypically as will be described below.)
 * The example used in this page is -(ᄋᆞ〮/으〮)면〮.

The initial minimal vowel of the final category of suffixes is dropped after a verb stem ending in a vowel or the sonorous consonant, except for -(ᄋᆞ/으)시〮, which drops the initial vowel after a vowel but not after.

The monosyllabic verb classes are given two names: an acronymic name given by Korean scholar Yoo Pil-jae, and a numbered name given by American scholar S. Robert Ramsey. The multisyllabic classes are given Yoo's names only, because Ramsey did not discuss them.

With a few exceptions, verbs which are a compound of multiple stems inherit the pitch accent pattern of their components.

Suffix pitch
Most Middle Korean suffixes have a fixed underlying pitch. For most of them, this is an underlying high pitch on all syllables.

The following suffixes involve a syllable with a fixed low pitch. There may be some others, but they are rare.


 * -(ᄋᆞ〮/으〮)ᅌᅵ is the most common suffix with underlying low pitch.
 * has an initial low-pitch syllable. Strangely, compound suffixes involving this suffix, such as, have the expected underlying high pitch on all syllables.
 * has an initial low-pitch syllable according to Yoo Pil-jae 2011.

The following three suffixes lack a fixed pitch, but take the same underlying pitch as that of the syllable that precedes it. In Korean, these are called.


 * , but not when followed by the subject-honorific (ᄋᆞ/으)시〮 or the desiderative (ᄋᆞ/으)지〮, in which case it assumes underlying high pitch.
 * In addition, had either an allomorph or synonymous suffix,, which was more common with transitive verbs. Strangely enough, the latter did have fixed underlying high pitch.
 * 1) the minimal vowel in (ᄋᆞ/으)시〮. The non-minimal syllable sí has high pitch.
 * Note that the minimal vowel has underlying high pitch in all other suffixes.

Finally, the object-honorific suffix had an unusual allomorphy:


 * Before consonants, it took the rising pitch, which is not really a distinct pitch but a low-high sequence within a single bimoraic syllable.
 * Before vowels, it took the low pitch but heightened the underlying pitch of the subsequent vowel. Therefore, even the minimal vowel of (ᄋᆞ/으)시〮 was heightened after.

This is identical to the pitch behavior of Class R! verb stems. In fact, this is because was the grammaticalized, suffixized form of the Class R! verb stem ; see  for more.

Tone sandhi
The interaction between stems and suffixes determine the underlying pitch of a conjugated verb. The surface pitch, which is what is written in actual Middle Korean sources (with a few very rare exceptions by scrupulous scribes attempting to write the underlying form) and transcribed in Wiktionary, is shaped by a simple but pervasive tone sandhi rule: high pitch cannot appear consecutively for more than two syllables, and the penultimate syllable in any such sequence is lowered to avoid this.

Note that the "rising pitch" is not really a distinct pitch but a low-high sequence within a single bimoraic syllable, so this sandhi rule still applies to it.

For example, the form 수〮므〮시ᄂᆞ〮니라〮 has underlying high pitch on all six syllables. However, the third and fifth syllable surface as low-pitch to avoid a triple sequence of high-pitch syllables.

While there are exceptions to this rule, they are largely irrelevant for the purposes of the verbal paradigm.

Class L/Class 1
The verb stem is a low-pitch monosyllable.

Class L!/Class 7
The verb stem is normally a low-pitch monosyllable. Before minimal-vowel-initial suffixes, it takes a bisyllabic allomorph involving a final low-pitch minimal vowel. Another analysis—producing the same results, although at odds with the explanation of MK pitch given above—could be that the stem is still a low-pitch monosyllable, but that it forcibly lowers the underlying pitch of any subsequent minimal vowel. See the example below.

Class H/Class 2
The verb stem is always high-pitch.

Class H!/Classes 3 and 4
The verb stem changes irregularly according to the suffix that follows it; this cannot be predicted phonologically. In compounds, the verb stem takes high pitch, which is why scholars now tend to suggest that the underlying pitch is high.

The pitch determination is loosely morphologically conditioned, and is as follows:

Ramsey divided Classes 3 and 4 based primarily on modern dialectal data, but there is little support for it in the Middle Korean corpus, as he himself admitted.

Class R/Class 5
The verb stem is always rising-pitch.

Class R!/Class 6
The verb stem is rising-pitch before a consonant-initial suffix, and low-pitch before any vowel-initial suffix.

As the rising pitch is not really a distinct pitch but a low-high sequence, what is really happening here is that the sequence is compressed into a single syllable when before a consonant, but bleeds out into the next syllable if there is any subsequent vowel. Therefore, the subsequent vowel is always underlying high-pitch, only surfacing as low-pitch when sandhi intervenes.

This is particularly important for the pitch of the minimal vowel of (ᄋᆞ/으)시. If we mistakenly believed that the syllable simply transforms from rising- to low-pitch, the minimal vowel would also have to be low-pitch due to being dependent on the preceding syllable. However, the vowel in question always takes high pitch absent sandhi.

Class LL~L/Class 8
All of these verbs have irregular stems that are normally vowel-final bisyllabic, but take a monosyllabic consonant-final allomorph for non-miminal vowel-initial suffixes. All syllables of the stem are always low-pitch.

Class LH~R
These verbs have irregular stems that are normally vowel-final bisyllabic, but take a monosyllabic consonant-final allomorph for non-miminal vowel-initial suffixes. The bisyllabic form has an initial low pitch and a final high pitch. The monosyllabic form has rising pitch. These verbs are very rare and Ramsey did not have a separate category for them.

Class LH
This is the largest class of bisyllabic verb stems, with a low pitch on the first syllable and a high pitch on the second.

Class LL
This is a medium-sized class of bisyllabic verb stems with low pitch on both syllables.

Class HH
This is a small class of bisyllabic verb stems with underlying high pitch on both syllables.

Class RH
This is another small class of bisyllabic verb stems.

Class LHL
This is the largest of the trisyllabic classes, which are quite rare in Middle Korean.

Class LHH
Because of tone sandhi, which obscures the underlying pitch in many inflections of these verbs, Yi 1964 appears to have erroneously classified these with the above underlying LHL class.

Other pitch patterns
A very few multisyllabic verb stems have LR, LLL, LLH, RLH, RHL, or HHL pitch patterns. As these are very rare, they have not been given their own sections.

Tendencies in pitch assignment
See also Appendix:Koreanic reconstructions.


 * Class L/Class 1
 * All verb stems in this class end with a non-lenited obstruent, including.
 * Conversely, the significant majority of verb stems that end with a non-lenited obstruent belong to this class.
 * Lenited consonants never occur with this class.
 * Class L!/Class 7
 * Almost all verbs that end in belong to this class.
 * Class H/Class 2
 * All verb stems with the form or, where  is a minimal vowel, belong to this class.
 * Class H!/Class 3, 4
 * This class consists solely of verb stems of the form.
 * Conversely, all such verb stems, with the exception of given above, belong to this class.
 * Class R!/Class 6
 * The majority of verb stems that end in a lenited consonant belong to this class.
 * Around half of verb stems that end in a nasal or in belong to this class.
 * Class LH
 * Virtually all causative verbs belong to this class.

Other irregularities
The alternation between stem-final and  before consonants, and  and  before vowels, are not discussed here because they can be explained by positing underlying ㅸ and ㅿ which surface as ㅂ and ㅅ in voiceless environments. They are therefore not irregular per se.

Verbs ending in minimal vowels
Verb stems ending in the minimal vowels and  have their minimal vowels elided by any non-minimal vowel-initial suffix.

Verbs ending in /-l/
Verb stems ending in have a few features:


 * The minimal vowel does not surface after except for (ᄋᆞ/으)시〮.
 * elides before most suffixes beginning with, , and , and also some beginning with ; the same applies for suffixes which would otherwise have a preceding minimal vowel
 * Final also causes most suffixes beginning with  to lenite to.

Compare below:

The verb irregularly elides final  before some (but not all) -initial suffixes as well. Compare:



Verbs ending in /-j/ (falling diphthongs)
Verb stems ending in falling diphthongs (,, , etc.) have the following features:


 * They cause diphthongization of a following vowel, effectively resulting in gemination of.
 * Three verbs,, , and are sometimes attested with a monophthongized stem before a vowel-initial suffix:  rather than , and so forth. But the rule is that the stem diphthong is also preserved.
 * They also cause most suffixes beginning with to lenite to.

/T/ irregularity
Some verb stems end in before consonants and  (realized as ) before vowels. These behave like the lenited consonants and ; indeed, an archiphoneme  could be posited for them.

/k/, /G/, /l/ irregularity
Some verb stems have shape before consonants and minimal vowel-initial suffixes, but have a  allomorph before non-minimal vowel-initial suffixes. The final consonant that appears here may be, , or. The vast majority of these stems belong to Class LL/8.

Related to this, some bisyllabic verb stems whose second syllable is have an allomorph with  before non-minimal vowel-initial suffixes. These stems belong to Class LH.

Some verb-specific irregularities
The stem of, a Class H! verb, takes before non-minimal vowel-initial suffixes.

The stem of is realized as  before most consonant-initial suffixes, and as  before all vowel-initial ones.