없어요 ~ 있어요 – Indicates Possession Too

I skipped some readings on Chapter 6 of my book, I probably thought I was through reading it because it explains some of the other uses of the verb 있어요 and  없어요.  The other practical use of this verb is to indicate possession comparable to I have and I don’t have in English.  Like the example below:

  • 내가 책이 있어요. (I have a book)
  • 내가 책이 없어요. (I don’t have a book)

I am going to hit two birds with one stone in my example above.  Another thing I learned is that there can be two subjects in one Korean sentence note that 내 가 and 책이 are both marked as subject in the first bullet.  In the case of sentences expressing possession both the possessor and possessed object can be made subject. However, the book says it is also usual for the possesor to be marked the topic while the possessed object is still the subject.  With this the above statement examples can be said ‘내는 책이 있어요’ and ‘내는 책이 없어요’ respectively.  This may contradict the rules using 이 specially when 나 is mentioned first time.  I think in that case the sentence in its form on the first bullet should apply.  

Advertisement

3 Replies to “없어요 ~ 있어요 – Indicates Possession Too”

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: