허웅 선생의 높임법에 대한 새로운 해석

The present study aims to reinterpret Hur Woong’s honorific system in 20th Century Korean Morphology and 20th Century Korean Syntactics from the perspective of grammar education. In this regard, it is assumed that expressions such as “Here is your order, sir.” or “It’s ten thousand won,” which are considered as grammatically wrong in school grammar, can be reinterpreted as grammatical expressions according to Hur Woong’s indirect honorifics (Hur Woong, 1995; 1997). In short, it is regarded as an indirect way of honorifics in that since the person who should be treated with respect can’t be honored, the objects relevant to the people are treated with respect. Another problem posed by the perspective of school grammar is that hearer honorifics is divided into ‘formal–informal’ mood: the former is subdivided into ‘Hasibsio style – Hao style – Hagae style – Haera style‘; the latter is also subdivided into ‘Haeyo style – Hae style.’ However, in the current study, it is indicated that those levels are not aligned with the learner intuition. This study presents a possible solution to this problem based on Hur Woong(1995)’s perspective. In other words, as he categorized hearer honorifics into ‘No honorifics – Modest honorifics – High honorifics,’ it is proposed that Hao style and Hasibsio style should be categorized in the Modest honorifics and No honorifics level, instead of treating them as independent levels. Those research findings are based on the current trend in grammar education which focuses on the practicality of grammatical knowledge rather than learning of grammar knowledge and places much value on learners’ inquiring process of authentic linguistic phenomena.