Language and culture in general:

1. What are the opposing views on the relationship between language and culture? Provide arguments and examples for your position.
   
   What is Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?
   
   What is "linguistic determinism"? Examples?



2. Exemplify how Korean language reflects its culture.
   



3. Explain how language and culture are related, taking the examples of food terms in Korean and English.
   

Han'gul, the Korean Script:

1. What type of writing system is Han'gul, the Korean script? Compare the Korean writing system with that of Chinese and Japanese.



2. How different is Han'gul from the Roman alphabet?



3. What is the designing principle of the consonant letters of Han'gul?



4. What is the designing principle of the vowel letters of Han'gul?



5. What is the historical background of the invention of Han'gul?



6. What do the various names of the Korean Script reflect?
   
   

Han'gul Movement by Choe Hyon-Bae:

1. How does Ch'oe see the value of Han'gul?
   
   
2. Ch'oe was very hostile to the tradition of reverence in Korea to Chinese
   writing. What did the use of Chinese writing in traditional Korean society
   symbolize to this linguistic reformer?
   
   
3. In Ch'oe's mind, what was the connection between the written word and
   national strength?
   
   
4. Why in Ch'oe's mind did the use of Han'gul represent a democratic force in
   Korean cultural development?

Makeup of Korean language

1. What is the status of Sino-Korean vocabulary in the Korean language
   
   
2. What was the historical background of the influx of Sino-Korean vocabulary?
   
   
3. What are the consequences of the influx of Chinese characters on the Korean language?
   
   
4. What is the relation between Korean and Japanese in terms of the paths of vocabulary transfer?
   
   

Color terms:

1. What are the two color term universals Berlin and Kay claim on?



2. (I) What are the basic color term categories in Korean, (II) in what stage does the Korean color term categorization stand in terms of the universal color term encoding sequence, and (III) what is the evidence for your answer in (II).



3. What is GRUE phenomenon and what are the examples of it in Korean?

Kinship terms:

1. What are the factors underlying the sibling kin terms in Korean in comparison with English?



2. What is patrilineal (as opposed to matrilineal) principle of kinship terms and what are the examples in Korean?



3. What is the agnate (as opposed to cognate) principle of kinship terms and what are the examples in Korean?



4. Who is the three-degree kin? Explain how you come up with your answer.



5. Compare the current kinship system of Korean with a native kinship system (stripping off Sino Korean kin terms). What can we infer from the record of the Kyerimyusa, an 11~12C document about Korean kinship system? What can we tell from the kinship terms in Yukchin dialect? What can we say about the change that has occurred to the Korean kinship system?
   



6. What are the examples of the use of kin terms for non-kins? What do they tell us about Korean culture and society?
   

Personal names and naming

1. Discuss how significant personal names are for Korean people.
   
   
2. Discuss the principle and structure of generation character in Korean personal names. Compare Korean with Chinese.
   
   
3. Discuss the structure of Korean personal names and the Chinese influence on it.
   
   
4. Compare the characteristics and culture of personal names between Korean and English

Slang

1. What are the functions of slang? Why do people use slang?
   
   
2. What are the characteristics of slang?
   
   
3. What are the strategies of creating slang expressions?

Sound symbolism

1. How does sound symbolism fair with the general assumption about the relation between sound and meaning? Discuss four types of sound symbolism in relation to the degree of arbitrary/non-arbitrary relation between form and meaning.



2. What implications are there in sound symbolism with regard to the relation between language and culture?
   
   
3. Korean uses two classes of vowels, bright vowels and dark vowels, to contrast different images or manners of movement. What kind of sound symbolism among the four types of sound symbolism discussed is this? Explain why you think so.