ABSTRACT
In Korean, the stems of verbs and adjectives always require suffixes. Korean suffixes express grammatical functions such as tense, aspect, sentence type, and speech level. Korean suffixes, depending on where they appear in the verb or adjective, can be categorized into two types: final endings and pre-final endings. Final endings include various speech level endings, such as the polite level and the formal speech level. Pre-final endings are inflectional elements that come between the stem and the final ending. The Korean past tense, like the English past tense, signals a past action or situation. However, there is one subtle difference. In English, the past tense primarily indicates something that occurred in the past. In Korean, on the other hand, the past tense indicates both past actions and whether the action or event has been completed or not.
