본고는 한국어 문법론에서 ‘절’과 ‘문(장)’, ‘절’과 ‘구’가 개념적으로 분명하게 구분되어 사용되지 못했던 점을 지적하고 각 개념의 확립과 개념어 사용의 일관성을 추구하려는 목적으로 작성되었다. 절은 주어와 서술어가 함께 나타난 구성을 가리킨다. 이에 따라 하나의 절로 이루어진 문장을 단문, 두 개 이상의 절로 이루어진 문장을 복문이라고 한다. 이러한 개념 정의에 따르면 문장 이하의 언어 형식을 ‘음운≤음절≤형태소≤단어≤구≤절≤문장’으로 일관성 있게 제시할 수 있게 되고 형태 단위와 통사 단위를 일관된 논리로 기술할 수 있게 된다. ‘서술절을 안은 문장’ 개념은 서술어 중심 통사론의 관점에서 보면 안은절도 없이 안긴절로서 서술절이 성립된다는 이상한 논리에 따른 것이므로 인정하기 어렵다. ‘문(장)’과 ‘절’을 분명하게 정의함으로써 ‘포유문(안은문장), 내포절(안긴절), 모절(안은절), 병렬문(이어진문장), 접속절(병렬문의 선행절), 보절, 절 접속’ 등과 같은 일관된 개념어를 사용할 수 있고, 특히 ‘문장 부사’와 ‘절 부사’를 엄밀히 구분할 수 있다.
This paper aims to point out the problem that Korean grammarian doesn``t distinguish intentionally the concepts of ‘clause’ and ‘sentence’ or ‘clause’ and ‘phrase’ and to establish the concept of clause so that we can use the three terms coherently. The chief contents of this paper are as follows. Firstly, the sentence that consists of one clause is a simple sentence, the sentence that consists of two clauses is a complex sentence. According to this definition, we can show consistently the linguistic forms under the unit of sentence as ‘phoneme≤syllable≤morpheme≤word≤phrase≤clause≤sentence’ and describe consistently the morphological units and syntactic units. Secondly, the clause is defined as a construction that contains subject and object, but the matrix clause that the subject is not realized in the embedding sentence and the no-subject sentence are also defined as clause on the ground that the subject are merely a complement like the object of the predicate. Thirdly, it is not misleading to express the ‘noun phrase(NP)’ as ‘noun clause’ so long as we use ‘phrase’ as a term of the generative grammars. Fourthly, from the viewpoint of the predicate-oriented syntax that is the mainstream of current syntax, the so-called ‘predicate clause’ is an inappropriate concept because it leads to a contradictory conclusion that the embedded clause are established without the embedding(matrix) clause. Fifthly, the existing quotation clause is classified into the adverbial phrase of direct quotation and the adverbial clause of indirect quotation by distinguish the adverbial case marker of direct quotation and the adverbial endings of indirect quotation. Sixthly, we can use the terms like ‘embedding sentence, embedded clause, embedding(matrix) clause, compound sentence, coordinated clause, complement clause, clause coordination’ consistently by drawing boundary clearly the ‘sentence’ and ‘clause’. Especially we can divide closely the existing ‘sentential adverb’ into two categories of the sentential adverb and the clause adverb.
