호ㆍ지칭접미사 ‘-님’과 의존명사 ‘님’의 상관 고찰

A Correlative Study on Addressing Suffix ‘-nim’ and Bound Noun ‘nim’

By origin, ‘-nim’ was the addressing suffix in order to show intimacy and respect to the close individuals such as family or relatives. Therefore, this term contains the functions of [+intimacy, +individual, +honor] as illustration of abeonim (father/father-in-law), eomeonim (mother/mother-in-law), orabeonim (brother), and hyoungnim (sister-in-law). In contrast, at the beginning of the Modern Korean period, this suffix transformed into having the functions of [-intimacy, -individual, +honor]. The basic ground of this transition is to minimize the grammatical deficiency caused by the disappearing vocative postposition, ‘ha’. That is, this disappearance of vocative post position ‘ha’ formed the lack of the grammatical system in calling respectful people so that speakers started using ‘-nim’ which includes the quality of [+honor] by means of supplying the deficiency. By linking ‘-nim’ after the terms of ‘status, class’, the present usage such as ‘kwajangnim (section chief), kyosunim (professor), bucheonim (Buddha) appears. In the process of this transformation, ‘-nim’s original function of [+intimacy] did not used after the Modern Korean period, the grammatical loss in appellation happened in the end. This paper regards ‘nim’ which appeared on purpose to replace the deficiency as bound noun. This mode gives both the feeling of intimacy and the attitude of respect in the formal situation, for example, ‘Song Chaerin nim, Chaerin nim, Song nim, Chamnamu nim’