Here is the problem paragraph from the SBS broadcast:
지난 12일부터 시작된 부산 APEC이 오늘(19일) 2차 정상회의를 마지막으로 대단원의 막을 내렸습니다. 오늘 정상회의에서는 무역자유화와 역내안전 확대를 주 내용으로 하는 부산 선언을 채택했습니다. 21개 나라 정상들은 이와는 별도로 도하 라운드의 성공적 타결의지를 담은 특별 성명도 채택했습니다.I will not talk about the first sentence in the paragraph since I already talked about it here, so I will only talk about the second and third sentences.
Today (November 19), with the conclusion of the second round of summit talks, the final curtain came down on the Busan APEC meetings, which began on November 12. Today at the summit meetings, the Busan declaration was adopted, in which the main content is free trade and regional security. Aside from this, the 21 heads of state adapted a special statement that expressed their agreement on reaching a successful compromise at the Doha Round of talks.
I see two problems with the second sentence. One is the phrase 주 내용으로 하는 부산 선언, which means "the Busan Declaration, in which the main content is...." Did SBS want to say 주 내용으로 하는 or 주 내용으로 한, which means "the main content was"? I think SBS wanted to say 주 내용으로 한 since the content was already included and adopted. 주 내용으로 하는 is possible, but it should be used to talk about future intentions. For example, it would be all right to say 주 내용으로 하는 부산 선언을 채택하겠습니다, which would mean "a Busan Declaration, in which the main content would be ... will be adapted." In my example, the content has not been adopted, yet.
The second problem I have with the second sentence is the phrase 정상회의에서는 선언을 채택했습니다. The sentence does not say who adopted the declaration; it only says that it was adopted at the summit meeting. The "meeting" did not adopt it; the participants at the meeting adopted it, but the participants are not mentioned in the sentence. Therefore, I think the sentence should read 선언이 채택됐습니다, not 선언을 채택했습니다.
In the third sentence, the most obvious mistake is that the sentence has two topics: 정상들은 and 이와는. The markers 은/는 are topic makers, and there should be only one topic in a sentence. In the SBS sentence, I think the topic should be 이와는, so the sentence should be rewritten as "이와는 별도로 21개 나라 정상들이 ...."
The second mistake I see in the third sentence is 도하 라운드의 성공적 타결의지를 담은 특별 성명도, which simply cannot be translated as it is. What I think SBS wanted to say was "a special statement that expressed their agreement on reaching a successful compromise at the Doha Round of talks." If that is the case, then the sentence should be rewritten as follows:
이와는 별도로 21개 나라 정상들이 도하 라운의 성공적인 타결을 바라는 의지를 담은 특별 성명도 채택했습니다.
In conclusion, I would rewrite the complete paragraph as follows:
지난 12일에 시작된 부산 APEC 에서는 오늘(19일)에 제2차 정상회의가 끝난 것으로 대단원의 막이 내렸습니다. 오늘 정상회의에서는 무역자유화와 역내안전 확대를 주 내용으로 한 부산 선언이 채택됐습니다. 이와는 별도로 21개 나라 정상들이 도하 라운의 성공적인 타결을 바라는 의지를 담은 특별 성명도 채택했습니다.
Koreans often complain about a problem in their society known as 대강주의 태도, which is an attitude of just doing enough to get the job done. In the United States, we often accuse government employees of having such an attitude. In fact, an expression we have created to describe it is, "That's good enough for government work." In regard to their language, many Koreans seem to have the same attitude: "That's good enough for government work."
nice article and nice blog too. i went to korea last year and i had great travel/time in that country. thanks and God bless.
ReplyDeleteThanks Jeff.
ReplyDeleteThese SBS guys seem really confused about transitive and intransitive verbs. Anyhow, I wanted to comment on the following point:
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I see two problems with the second sentence. One is the phrase 주 내용으로 하는 부산 선언, which means "the Busan Declaration, in which the main content is...." Did SBS want to say 주 내용으로 하는 or 주 내용으로 한, which means "the main content was"? I think SBS wanted to say 주 내용으로 한 since the content was already included and adopted. 주 내용으로 하는 is possible, but it should be used to talk about future intentions. For example, it would be all right to say 주 내용으로 하는 부산 선언을 채택하겠습니다, which would mean "a Busan Declaration, in which the main content would be ... will be adapted." In my example, the content has not been adopted, yet.
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I'm not 백퍼센트 about this one, but I think "하는" here is more appropriate. It becomes a little gray because of some overlap in the forms of verbs and adjectives in Korean (ie, 취소하다 is essentially a verb, whereas 깨끗하다 is essentially an adjective despite both using 하다).
If it were adjectival use, you would be 100% correct in that it should be "한," however, in this sentence "하다" is most likely acting like a verb (in terms of conjugation). This leads to the tricky part in the way tenses of verbs delineate meaning. On one hand, English tends to express everything in terms of absolute time so it would make sense to use "한" here from an English standpoint since it is a past event.
On the other hand, Korean generally expresses time relationships in relative terms. So even though 채택했다 is past tense, the descriptive clause indicating the content of the 선언 need not necessarily be. In fact, the meaning of the sentence changes quite a bit by altering the tense of the descriptive clause.
In this case 주 내용으로 한 부산 선언 does indeed refer to what the content of the 선언 was at some point in time, but not necessarily what the content was at the time its adoption or the time of the newsbroadcast . For the sake of simpler argument, let's say the content had been red cars. If "한" is used, at the time the 선언 was adopted the main content could have been changed to purple cars. So the use of "한" in this case means that the 선언 had a certain main content at one point in time in the past, but may or may not have had the same main content at the time of its adoption or presently.
Again, using the example of red cars, the use of "하는" in this case would mean that no matter what previous discussion existed about the 선언, at the time of its adoption the main content was red cars.
To summarize another long winded idea, both "한" and "하는" are perfectly valid here. The main difference is that "하는" emphasizes what the content of the 선언 was at the time of its adoption, whereas "한" indicates what the content was at some time in the past (and may not have been, but still likely was at the time of adoption). So while neither are strictly wrong, "하는" seems to express the intended meaning with less margin for error.
Hi Sub8hr,
ReplyDeleteI am really glad you posted because I was hoping someone would challenge me on 한 and 하는. I wanted an excuse to think about it a little more since I was still a little confused, myself. Having thought about it, thought, I still think I am right. Here are my reasons.
First of all, we are not talking adjectives (상태동사) here. SBS used 하는 in the sentence, which means they were referring to a verb since adjectives do not that form. The verb they were most likely referring to was either 결정하다, 작성하다 or something similar. Actually, it does not really matter which verb, but let's just assume that it was 결정하다.
하는 refers to action in the present, and 한 to refers to action in the past. Now if we replace 하는 is the sentence with 결정하는, here is what we will have:
"...주 내용으로 결정하는 부산 선언을 채택했습니다."
"...adopted the Busan Declaration, in which the main content is being decided."
When they adopted the declaration, was the main content still being discussed? Or had they already decided on it? I think they had already decided on it.
As I mentioned in my post, (결정)하는 would have been all right if the declaration had not adopted yet since it would have been possible they were still deciding on the main content.
One more thing, in the third sentence of the paragraph there was the phrase "타결의지를 담은 특별 성명도 채택했습니다," in which 담은 is referring to an action already completed. Since they adopted a completed action in the third paragraph, shouldn't they have also adopted a completed action in the second?
Again, thanks for posting, sub8hr. I enjoyed reading your argument, even though I disagree with it.
Ok, I read this this morning and I still couldn't quite find peace with the topic so I asked my Korean teacher about it today.
ReplyDeleteAssuming we correct the sentence to "~이 채택됐습니다," which I wholly agree with, if for some reason we change the sentence to something like "결정하다" instead of "하다" that changes the situation quite a bit and I think I could write another page about that alone, so for now I'll stick to the sentence as given with just 하다.
You threw me a curve ball with the 담은 example though. Use of 담는 rather than 담은 would in fact be incorrect. However, comparing the conjugation of 담다 to 하다 is problematic since 담다 is an instantaneous verb whereas 하다 by itself is a continuous state verb.
Since 담다 is an instantaneous verb, the action of "putting in" is perceived to happen essentially instantaneously. So unless you intend to refer to the precise moment something is "put in," "담는" is awkward under nearly any circumstances.
However, in this situation 하다 is a continuous state verb so it must be treated differently. The Korean teacher's analysis of this situation is that the use of "하는" here is the most common way of conjugating the modifying clause that describes the content of the 선언. 하다 being a continuous verb does not mean that the use of "하는" here indicates that the content is still under debate at the time of adoption, but rather indicates that the clause it represents is a time-independent, unchanging (but already set) description of the content of the 선언 that was adopted.
Furthermore, she says that while "하는" would be the bubble sheet answer if all you had was this sentence and you had to pick one, neither are necessarily incorrect. The use of "한" would emphasize that there was a 선언 that existed and had its content decided in the past at some point earlier than the adoption. Since using "하는" here already indicates that the content of the modifying clause was included and adopted in the 선언, it is not necessary to use "한" to express that meaning.
So basically it seems like the main difference here is that "하는" is the way to go if your intent is to simpley create a clause to describe the content of the adopted 선언, whereas "한" would be used if for some reason you wanted to add emphasis to the fact that the content was decided in the past.
To answer your question, my undergrad was actually in Japanese Linguistics. I'm currently in Korea having an affair with the Korean language though. The languages are structurally remarkably similar. Japanese also has the phenomenon of relative tenses rather than insisting on consistency in tense like in English. There are quite a few works out there about how shifting the tenses around in Japanese can change the meaning of a sentence both subtlely and drastically, but unfortunately I haven't come across any such detailed works about Korean yet. I'm a grammar fiend though, and I love poking around at the nitty gritty details.
Sub8hr,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your persistence because you have helped me realize a big mistake I was making, which was putting the cart before the horse.
For reasons I cannot explain, I was trying to connect the 하는 to 선언을, instead of to 확대를, which means I might be dumb enough to qualify for a job at SBS. It becomes more clear if we omit 주내용으로:
"무역자유화와 역내안전 확대를 하는 부산 선언을 채택됐습니다."
"the Busan Declaration, which expands free tree and security in the region, was adopted."
In my translstion, I was trying to say "the declaration which decided to expand," which means I was trying to add a verb that was not in the sentence. The 하는 means 확대하는.
If we changed 확대하는 to 확대한, then that would mean that free trade and security has already been expanded, which is not the case. Just as your teacher said, 확대하는 is correct.
Thank you, Sub8hr. I am glad you are around to keep me honest.