Korean Sentence Word Order

What You Will Learn in This Unit

The basic word order of a Korean declarative sentence is subject, object, and predicate, and the predicate always comes at the end of the sentence. After completing this unit, you will be able to find where sentence elements are placed and recognize modifiers and omitted subjects. Particles and polite 해요-style endings are covered in detail in Units 15, 16, and 25. Here we look only at where words are placed.

Basic Order and the Position of the Predicate

The basic word order of a Korean sentence is subject — object — predicate. A subject is a word that indicates the agent of an action or the bearer of a state, an object is a word that indicates the target that receives the action of the predicate, and a predicate is a word that expresses an action or a state. Because the predicate comes at the end of the sentence, the listener must hear to the end of the sentence to understand what happened.

When the elements in the table above are put into one sentence, we get '친구가 책을 [채글] 읽어요 [일거요].' — A friend reads a book. Here 친구가 (friend) is the subject, 책을 (book) is the object, and 읽어요 (reads) is the predicate. Note that the predicate 읽어요 is at the end of the sentence.

Particles Mark the Role in Place of Word Order

In Korean, word order is relatively free. This is because the particle attached to a word shows whether that word is the subject or the object. So even if the object comes first, as in '빵을 친구가 사요.' — A friend buys the bread., the meaning stays the same, and the speaker decides which element to emphasize by changing the position. However, only the positions of the subject and the object are free. The predicate must still come at the end of the sentence. You need to learn the basic word order so that you can also read sentences in which the positions have been changed.

Modifiers and Omission of the Subject

A modifier comes before the word it modifies. A modifier of a noun is placed before the noun, so we write '새 가방' — new bag, and an adverb that modifies a predicate is placed before that predicate, so we write '빨리 와요' — come quickly. Remember that the position of a noun modifier is fixed before the noun.