외국인으로서 한국어 높임말을 제대로 구사하는 것은 쉽지 않은 일이다. 본고는 한국어 높임법을 일본어 높임법과의 대조언어학적 방법에서 접근하여 살펴보고, 양언어의 차이점에서 오는 특징들을 바탕으로 일 본인 학습자들에게 효율적인 한국어 높임법 교육 방안을 모색하였다. 원활한 의사소통을 목적으로 한 주체 높임과 상대 높임, 객체 높임법에 대한 구체적인 교육 방안의 제시는 외국인으로서 한국어 높임법을 학습하는 데 유용한 정보가 될 것이다.

Y.-H. Kim (2007) has presented an analysis of the alternation among Korean dative/locative case particles within the framework of the minimalist program. The gist of his analysis lies in his claim that the alternation among the case particles is influenced by their associated nouns’ animacy, a kind of gender according to his claim, and that their alternation is determined by agreement in the sense of the minimalist program. Recently, Kim and Chung (2015) have come up with an analysis of the honorific system of Korean from a totally different point of view. They treat kkey ‘to(honorific)’ as a realization of the honorific feature [+hon] whether the associated noun is assigned nominative or dative. They also make criticism of Y.-H. Kim’s (2007) analysis while claiming that agreement is not an operation in narrow syntax but one caused by feature sharing at the PF component as discussed by Bobaljik (2008). In this paper, we will take a critical look at Kim and Chung’s (2015) analysis and make a point of its flaws, and then try to present some solutions to Y.-H. Kim’s (2007) real problems.

Korean honorifics system is very well developed. It is divided into three categories, including subject Korean honorifics, object Korean honorifics and relative Korean honorifics. Firstly, this paper briefly introduced the three types of Korean honorifics, and then mainly investigated the most important part of Korean honorifics system-relative Korean honorifics. Besides, the paper researched the mistakes Chinese learners often made, comparing with Chinese honorifics. The paper may help Chinese learners to understand and master Korean honorifics much better and efficiently.