그 as pronoun and definite article

[Vince]

Now, I was always taught that there are three demonstratives in Korean, namely 이, 그, and 저, corresponding to "this", "that", and "yon" respectively. The conventional line is that Korean has no definite article, and this is what all the textbooks dutifully report (at least the ones I read). However, several of my Korean friends insist that "that" can only be translated as 저, and 그 should be translated "the". This is actually upheld to some extent on the Naver Online Dictionary, which gives both "the" and "that" as possible translations, while Wiktionary gives "that (of what has been already said or known)", which sounds quite a lot like a definite article. Now I notice that all the instances I come across of 그 as a modifier seem to be happily translatable as "the". What's the story here?

Another thing I recall from my textbooks is that there is no straightforward third person pronoun in Korean, and that circumlocutions like 그 사람 or 그분 are needed instead. I was aware that 그는 can be used as "he", but was told that this is an "Anglicism" used in translating foreign works. However, I've found it being used all over the place, in novels, academic books, newspapers, and so on, and it also seems that it may actually be a native Korean development -- though I can't remember now where I read that. Not just 그는 either, but 그 with all clitics -- 그에게, 그를, etc. Am I missing something or are the textbooks simply wrong?

(One example sentence on Naver combines both of these usages:

그는 그 사업의 후원자들을 물색해 놓았다.

He drummed up some supporters for the project.

In none of the example sentences for "그" has it been translated as "that"...)

[linguoboy]

Now, I was always taught that there are three demonstratives in Korean, namely 이, 그, and 저, corresponding to "this", "that", and "yon" respectively. The conventional line is that Korean has no definite article, and this is what all the textbooks dutifully report (at least the ones I read). However, several of my Korean friends insist that "that" can only be translated as 저, and 그 should be translated "the". This is actually upheld to some extent on the Naver Online Dictionary, which gives both "the" and "that" as possible translations, while Wiktionary gives "that (of what has been already said or known)", which sounds quite a lot like a definite article. Now I notice that all the instances I come across of 그 as a modifier seem to be happily translatable as "the". What's the story here?

I think your friends are the victims of a kind of translation fallacy that which demands one-to-one correspondences between words in different languages. In fact, the correspondences are always many-to-many. English has both "the" and "that" whereas Korean has only 그, so naturally there are circumstances in which 그 will correspond to English "the". On the other hand, Korean has 그 and 저 whereas English has only "that", so naturally there are circumstances where "that" will also correspond to 그. This is not problematic unless you mistakenly insist on accepting only one of these correspondences as "true".

Your friends are demonstrably wrong about 저 always corresponding to English "that". To quote Lee and Ramsey (The Korean language, p. 105) "[A]naphoric uses of 'that' can only be translated as 그(것). For example, the famous soliloquy of Hamlet, 'To be or not to be, that is the question" is translated as 사느냐 죽느냐 그것 (*저것) 이 문제다." Ask your Korean friends if they would accept 저것 here. I'll be very surprised if they do. In addition, it's not hard to find instances where translating 그 as "the" is awkward at best. For example, 그날은 약속이 없습니다. How would you put that into English? Or what about 저 버스들이 그 쪽으로 가나요?

Another thing I recall from my textbooks is that there is no straightforward third person pronoun in Korean, and that circumlocutions like 그 사람 or 그분 are needed instead. I was aware that 그는 can be used as "he", but was told that this is an "Anglicism" used in translating foreign works. However, I've found it being used all over the place, in novels, academic books, newspapers, and so on, and it also seems that it may actually be a native Korean development -- though I can't remember now where I read that. Not just 그는 either, but 그 with all clitics -- 그에게, 그를, etc. Am I missing something or are the textbooks simply wrong?

I wouldn't call this a "native development"; I would call it a "naturalised borrowing". What started off as "translatese" is now a part of the living language. Already by the end of the 19th century, 그 was being used on its own as a third-person pronoun, but grammarians characterised it as "disrespectful". I think what's led to its widespread acceptance is not only the model of English and other European languages but also a decline in the use of respect language generally.

It's parallel to the history of 그녀, which was completely foreign to Korean when it was first adopted around the time of the Second World War. But a linguist friend who was doing practice fieldwork on Korean says that it seems to be fully accepted as part of the native pronominal system now. And there are parallel developments in both Japanese and Chinese. Languages can change significantly in a relatively short time, particularly when it's a time of great social upheaval.

[Vince]

On the second point: That's what I was told, but I also know that theory to be disputed: there are reference grammars out there that say the "그 = he" development has nothing to do with translatese and was a development already in motion before Koreans were in contact with Europeans. I will try to look up some references.

[Edit - Martin's Reference Grammar says that the usage of 그 as a pronoun is attested by the 15th century (!) and is equivalent to 그이. It asserts that 그 in general is translatable as "the former, the". The citations given for its use as a pronoun are:

ku ∙casi∙m ye ∙∙kyesya∙m ol -- that he is sleeping (1475)

ku me∙kun ∙∙HHWUW ∙ey ∙za -- after he had eaten (1459)

Edit 2-

Now I've found the relevant section in the actual grammar rather than just the lexicon, this is what Martin has to say on the use of 그 as a pronoun:

The anaphoric designator ku 'that one' is used as a third-person pronoun only in rather formal writing, for it is impersonal as compared with ku sālam / i / nom / ... . When used, it has a masculine orientation, but it can also refer to females. A fairly new (post-1945?) pronoun ku-nye (perhaps modeled on Japanese kano-zyo) is used consistently by some authors for references to 'she / her' while others refer to females by using ku and ku-nye interchangeably.

On that basis 그 seems to be very old and well-attested, but the introduction of 그녀 to refer specifically to women is a more recent innovation, which might have some connection to translatese (but the implication here seems to be that it emerged among native authors, perhaps by analogy with Japanese, rather than translators.)]

For the point about 그 as "the", the one Korean I asked earlier today rejected your second example "저 버스들이 그 쪽으로 가나요?", but I do take the general point that it's clearly not a definite article in all circumstances. When I pointed this out they still insisted that its primary meaning should be understood as "the", at least outside of set expressions like 그날, 그 쪽, etc.

(I will ask about the Hamlet example.) They said 그것 is indeed right if they have to choose (as expected), but also unnecessary and wouldn't be used in "real" speech (so "pragmatically" incorrect) -- then again, this also falls under the "set expressions" category.

Another example where the fits and that sounds awkward (if not wrong), from the book I'm reading:

그 본격적인 신호는 소련의 정부기관지 『이즈베스치아(Izvestia: 뉴스)』로부터 나타났다.

The real signal came from the Soviet government organ Izvestia.
*That real signal came from the Soviet government organ Izvestia.

Since this comes at the start of a paragraph and there's no previous mention of signals or, broadly speaking, this particular event, I fail to see how it's being used as a deictic there rather than simply a definite article. For reference, the previous paragraph is:

이 일을 계기로 소련군이 조선공산당북부조선분국과의 제휴 아래 모스크바3상회의의 졀정에 반대하는 세력을 제거하거나 순화시킴으로써 북한의 정치적 사회적 세력들을 지지의 한 방향으로 집결시키는 일을 본격적으로 추진할 수 있었기 때문이다.

Which, translating it roughly, is:

In connection with this fact the Soviet military, with the cooperation of the northern branch office of the Korean Communist Party, took the opportunity to eliminate the forces opposing the decision of the 3rd Moscow Conference and by means of a purge thus be able to firmly propel North Korea's political and social forces onto a single course.

At least as I understand it, this seems to be a case of a grammatical article rather than deixis. But I suppose this depends on what the division between those things is...