# 회사인데 소리 안 내며 웃느라



## idialegre

Hi everybody, I'm trying to translate this phrase: 회사인데 소리 안 내며 웃느라. I understand that the gist of it is, "I'm in the office, so I can't laugh out loud," but I'm not sure about the exact meaning of 웃느라. Could someone explain?

고맙습니다!


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## vientito

I am not sure if this is right but check this 

http://www.koreangrammaticalforms.com/entry.php?eid=0000000526


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## Superhero1

At the end of the sentence, the word 혼났다 is omitted : 회사인데 소리 안내며 웃느라 혼났다.
("At the office, I had a very hard time not laughing out loud.")

-느라 refers to the reason. e.g. 공부하느라 전화를 받지 못했다., 청소하느라 벨소리를 못들었다. 수업 시간에 몰래 만화책을 보느라 혼났다. 치약 없이 양치질하느라 힘들었다 etc.


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## 조금만

I was keen to see what the native speakers had to say here, and I see that while I was musing on the matter Superhero has delivered the goods. 

However, I'll post what I was about to say anyway, because it does suggest a few additional strands.

I've encountered the ~느라(고) pattern quite a lot, but as far as I can recall it was always in the first of two clauses, where the verb it's attached to provided an explanation for the event or state specified in the following clause, which was generally something unfortunate or regrettable, but unavoidable thanks to what was in the first clause. 시험 공부 하느라(고) 친구를 만날 수 없다. Because (of the unfortunate fact that) I was studying for an exam (the sad consequence was that...) 

I see that in the examples Superhero has now provided, the consequence is in every case arguably undesirable or unwelcome, so maybe that implication is indeed present in the choice of this particular pattern to provide a reason or explanation.

But in the example as posted, common sense would suggest that it's the fact of being at work/in the office that is the explanation for the speaker having to laugh without letting out a sound, rather than inability to laugh out loud being the explanation for why he or she's in the office.

That led me to think that the use of the same pattern in a somewhat different way (and one I myself don't recall encountering "in the wild") in those examples vientito pointed us to seemed to me a better fit, but I note that in those examples, too, the ~느라(고) is the first (both sequentially and logically) of two clauses. That made me wonder whether in the original example, there wasn't a suppressed or implied consequence (e.g. "but the boss saw my shoulders heaving all the same") that would mean the construction is still in a sort of virtual first position, before a kind of zero-valued second clause. One could say that Superhero's explanation has filled out that zero-value placeholder and confirmed that suspicion, though with a different value from the one I imagined.

I also wonder whether in the usage on the page vientito pointed to, as well as in the ones more familiar to me that Superhero has now provided, the pattern doesn't imply that the result of "trying one's very best" was none too successful? That seems to be plainly the case in the second example on that webpage, which is set up for the missing second clause to be something less than wonderful. I don't know about the first example, because I don't really know what it means, in either Korean or English.

멕기? That doesn't look very Korean to me. Could that be Japanese "mekki" 鍍金 (literally gold-plating, though also metaphorical for "pretence")? That's read 도금 in Korean and means "gold plate" (I've not encountered a secondary meaning of "fake" in Korean for this term) If that is what the word is, it would be interesting to have more context for that example, to see whether the puffing and blowing had the desired effect. If it didn't, then that would fit in with my notion that the efforts referred to using this variant of the pattern pattern are maybe generally less than wholly successful.


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## vientito

I have to consult naver on this one. Below is pasted straight from there

"
-느라고	

어미

1 . (동사 어간이나 어미 ‘-으시-’ 뒤에 붙어) 앞 절의 사태가 뒤 절의 사태에 목적이나 원인이 됨을 나타내는 연결 어미. [비슷한 말] -느라.

        영희는 웃음을 참느라고 딴 데를 보았다.
        철수는 어제 책을 읽느라고 밤을 새웠다.
        먼 길을 오느라고 힘들었겠구나.

"

I am not seeing anywhere in the definition that the following clause has to be negative or undesirable at all.  All it states is that the first clause is the "purpose" or "reason" of doing the latter.  So it implies more in line with "in order to" or "such that" or "because".  A 느라고 B  ->   B in order that A  (or) because of A hence B.  If in fact choosing "purpose" as our point of reference it looks suspiciously similar to "도록" or "위해" to me.  ex 조용하도록 (하다) -> make sure it be quiet.

After all I will leave it to the native speakers as referees since I still have so much to learn from this language.  One only gets humbler over time.


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## ddungbo

조금만 said:


> I've encountered the ~느라(고) pattern quite a lot, but as far as I can recall it was always in the first of two clauses,



 That's right. 느라고 almost always followed by the next clasue that expresses the result of the event held previously.
One example I can think of as a counter proof against this is, offhand, the short version of answering in response to a question. For example,

boss: 아니 오늘 또 늦었네요? 
employee : 죄송합니다. 오는데 시간이 많이 걸렸습니다. 교통사고가 나서 그거 수습하느라...

Ok, this is not the case that I said it was goint to be, this is just a matter of placing ideas before or after in speech or writing that might in line with the sequence of interests the speaker had in mind.




> where the verb it's attached to provided an explanation for the event or state specified in the following clause, which was generally something unfortunate or regrettable, but unavoidable thanks to what was in the first clause. 시험 공부 하느라(고) 친구를 만날 수 없다. Because (of the unfortunate fact that) I was studying for an exam (the sad consequence was that...) I see that in the examples Superhero has now provided, the consequence is in every case arguably undesirable or unwelcome, so maybe that implication is indeed present in the choice of this particular pattern to provide a reason or explanation.



Like the other post the other day, this is where I think you're pretty well versed in Korean. What you explained holds generally. The negative implication is indeed present in the native speaker's choice of this particular pattern. 




> That made me wonder whether in the original example, there wasn't a suppressed or implied consequence (e.g. "but the boss saw my shoulders heaving all the same") that would mean the construction is still in a sort of virtual first position, before a kind of zero-valued second clause. One could say that Superhero's explanation has filled out that zero-value placeholder and confirmed that suspicion, though with a different value from the one I imagined.



You're right. The original as posted is not a complete sentence. And if I understand this part of your thinking, the phrase is indeed in the first position, waiting to be connected with the following clause, idea. 
If it was a response to a question, for example,

A: 너 왜 그렇게 숨을 거칠게 쉬어? (why are you panting?/wheezing(?))
B: 회사인데 소리 안내며 웃느라.

Of course, the B's response would be in the full extent with the fuction of ellipsis(?)

Superhero's,  회사인데 소리 안내며 웃느라 혼났다. is also a complete sentence with two clauses

Oh oh, hit the speed bump here, I don't know, but I think you're on to something because this two -느라 appear to be slightly different in sense. 

시험 공부 하*느라* 친구를 만날 수 없다.
회사인데 소리 안내며 웃*느라* 혼났다.

Ok, first, as the resulting situation, your version "but the boss saw my shoulders heaving all the same" is not quite on. Honestly, I don't quite get the meaning because of 'all the same' in your sentence but I assume the sentence means the boss saw his shoulders heaving, which essentially means he got caught. 

Now, "회사인데 소리 안내며 웃느라 + a negative result" is this what you're thinking?

This is not the way the construction works. Your idea would be constructed along the lines of "회사인데 소리 안내며 웃었*지만* 과장/부장/사장님은 내 어깨의 흔들림을 감지하셨다." 


Back to the above pair, now I don't have much time and idea to go on with. 
Instead I would give a different version which might be in the sense easier to figure out. 

회사인데 소리 안내며 웃*느라* 숨을 쉴 수가 없었다. 


Oh wait, I think I've just unraveled this entangled coils. I think you misunderstood the meaning of 혼났다 Superhereo used in his sentence. Yes it could very well be confusing. 혼났다 here means "the speaker" experienced some sort of exertion (of any kind), not 'the speaker was rebuked.' Is this the source of your confusion?

Anyway hope this helps a bit.


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## ddungbo

vientito said:


> I have to consult naver on this one. Below is pasted straight from there
> 
> "
> -느라고
> 
> 어미
> 
> 1 . (동사 어간이나 어미 ‘-으시-’ 뒤에 붙어) 앞 절의 사태가 뒤 절의 사태에 목적이나 원인이 됨을 나타내는 연결 어미. [비슷한 말] -느라.
> 
> 영희는 웃음을 참느라고 딴 데를 보았다.
> 철수는 어제 책을 읽느라고 밤을 새웠다.
> 먼 길을 오느라고 힘들었겠구나.
> 
> "
> 
> I am not seeing anywhere in the definition that the following clause has to be negative or undesirable at all.  All it states is that the first clause is the "purpose" or "reason" of doing the latter.  So it implies more in line with "in order to" or "such that" or "because".  A 느라고 B  ->   B in order that A  (or) because of A hence B.  If in fact choosing "purpose" as our point of reference it looks suspiciously similar to "도록" or "위해" to me.  ex 조용하도록 (하다) -> make sure it be quiet.
> 
> After all I will leave it to the native speakers as referees since I still have so much to learn from this language.  One only gets humbler over time.



Oh yeah, this is what I thought to be the subtle difference between seemingly the same 느라고. Maybe later, but now I'm done with this.


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## 조금만

vientito said:


> I have to consult naver on this one. Below is pasted straight from there
> 
> "
> -느라고
> 
> 어미
> 
> 1 . (동사 어간이나 어미 ‘-으시-’ 뒤에 붙어) 앞 절의 사태가 뒤 절의 사태에 목적이나 원인이 됨을 나타내는 연결 어미. [비슷한 말] -느라.
> 
> 영희는 웃음을 참느라고 딴 데를 보았다.
> 철수는 어제 책을 읽느라고 밤을 새웠다.
> 먼 길을 오느라고 힘들었겠구나.
> 
> "
> I am not seeing anywhere in the definition that the following clause has to be negative or undesirable at all.  All it states is that the first clause is the "purpose" or "reason" of doing the latter.



No mention of a negative nuance in the definition, true. But take a close look at the examples. (Another saying from one of my venerable former mentors, in lexicography this time: "A dictionary without examples is like a house without windows" -- and he meant authentic examples of the kind naver generally gives, not ones made up by the compilers themselves to support their contentions, as still happens in in some Korean high school Engish teaching materials, where some very bizzare "English" examples can sometimes be found)  

Admittedly, staying up all night to read a book might be seen as a highly positive tribute to the book's qualities, but it's also something that is likely to have an undesirable impact on the reader's everyday life if repeated too often.  And in the third example, the tiredness which the speaker supposes the person who has had a long journey must be experiencing is the sort of thing most people would rather not experience given a choice. The fact that the speaker's tone is obviously sympathetic doesn't alter that nuance in the chosen construction.



vientito said:


> After all I will leave it to the native speakers as referees since I still have so much to learn from this language.  One only gets humbler over time



True again, but I fear humility is a quality not always present in the people who compile dictionaries and grammars, which is why I am always mistrustful of their rules and definitions until I have been able to test them against the evidence of usage. (Not to mention the fact that some of my friends are professional lexicographers, and I know what they get up to...) 

That's why the Internet is such a marvellous resource. It provides masses of usage (some of it of pretty dubious quality, but that's always been true of a portion of what's been said or written in all living languages, long before modern technology came along). And it provides forums like this one, where learners can by-pass the dictionaries and grammars, or at least supplement them, by presenting native speakers with specimens of usage found "in the wild" and getting their reactions.  

It's a sound maxim in language learning that "the native speaker is always right", although I'd prefer to rephrase that more cautiously as "If it seems wrong to a native speaker, then it ultimately can't be right, and if it seems right to a native speaker, then it can't be fundamentally wrong".  

The problem is, especially where two languages are as grammatically and syntactically so far apart as English and Korean, that native speakers may not always know _why_ they're right, or at least not in a form that can be easily explained to the learner.  There are many things about the Korean language which are so obvious to native speakers that they never have to think about them until puzzled foreigners raise them, and their first attempts at explanation sometimes leave out quite important things which they of course know, but don't always realize they need to make explicit, until the learners react to their initial explanations. You can see that kind of exchange happening time and again in this forum, and not only in the Korean section, and that's its major value in my eyes.


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## Superhero1

Having turned off my laptop, I thought someone would say to me, “hey superhero1, why on earth did you say ‘just for the reason’, not including its negativeness” by Korean native speakers, or “Considering your examples, the following clause is always negative. right?” by learners of Korean.

The reason I explain 느라 as a neutral connecting strand is that the sentence, including the following clause, can be positive(or neutral). To defend stance of the Korean dictionary and myself, I’ll give you more examples.

e.g. 스파게티 만드느라 수고했어! Thank you for making spaghetti. (to my wife)
그간 공부하느라 애썼다. You really have worked hard in the meanwhile. Good job, boy. (one’s father says to his son)
동생 돌보느라 고생했네, 우리 아들. Thank you for taking care of your younger brother, My son. (I am 13 years old and my brother is 1 year old, and I have taken care of him since my parents went out)

One might insist that the meaning of the words 수고했다, 애썼다, 고생했다 entails one’s painstaking effort, therefore, those words are negative, not neutral[positive]. However, in my knowledge and sense of Korean, those words don’t have any negativeness. Either Compliment or encouragement, even one's deed, conveys only positive(or can be neutral) nuance to me. 
(My wife happily made spaghetti and I just wanted to express my thankness 수고했다 which is not negative to either my wife or me; I was absorbed in studying because it was interesting and I really wanted to go to oxbridge so I just enjoyed my time; Taking care of my younger brother was not hard because he is lovely and mild, and I really love him. We just spend a little time together happily.)

In general, the former clause which is connected with –느라 is an excuse or a cause, and the following clause is usually negative, as Mr. 조금만 mentioned above. And that’s a really good answer. But there is another exception, so we can't judge its negativeness of -느라 form, and the dictionary also can't say its negativeness either, for that reason. 


* 영희는 웃음을 참느라고 딴 데를 보았다.

In korean, this sentence is correct. 영희 shouldn’t laugh at someone or something(at the disabled) but she couldn’t endure laughing, so she turned her head, looking somewhere. 

Or, in conference meeting, the employee 영희 shouldn't laugh in front of her boss, but she couldn’t stand laughing, she turned her head.


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## 조금만

I find this all really fascinating, but since I imagine that people less close than I am to the pathological end of the obsessive-compulsive spectrum must be tiring of it, I'll try not to flog it to death. (And I do hope that idialegre hasn't succumbed to a fatal bout of tedium vitae as a result of what his or her query has unleashed).

However, it looks to me like two of those three new examples can both be construed as instances the same sort of elided second clause that puzzled me in the originally posted example.
스파게티 만드느라 수고했어! 
그간 공부하느라 애썼다.

Here the second verb, though it bears the tense markers and therefore looks like a normal result - consequence two-clause sequence, isn't a consequence clause at all. It's more a reaction or response to an elided, but understood, second clause

스파게티 만드느라 [zero clause] 수고했어! 
그간 공부하느라 [zero clause] 애썼다.

The thanks and the congratulatory acknowledgement expressed by the speaker here are actually for the time or effort that the action marked by the 느라 pattern _putatively_ cost the performer of the appreciated action. And precisely what makes these examples into instances of overall positive appreciation by the speaker to the hearer (and in that sense plainly not "negative" _overall_, which I didn't claim they were) is that the speaker is acknowledging that the other person put themselves out to some degree in order to perform the action marked by the ~느라 pattern. That acknowledgement seems to me to be indicated in the congratulatory word that ends each sentence too. Even if the wife enjoys cooking spaghetti, the husband by recognising her "hard work" is acknowledging that she chose something that was indeed, to his mind, more like "work" than enjoyment. And even if the avid student found studying pure fun, the person offering the congratulations doesn't see things that way, because 애썼다 implies "effort-ful" rather than "effortless" activity. 

As for the third example, well there there is indeed an explicit two-clause structure, and the second clause here means something like "that must have been quite a pain", so it's plain that the speaker _thinks_ the elder son "suffered", even if as a matter of fact he had the time of his life playing with his sibling.  

We need to bear in mind that in all these cases it's the speaker of the sentence, not the performer of the appreciated action, who is forming or implying a judgement about the arduousness of the action, so whether that "activity performing" person saw it as unpleasant or troublesome or not is neither here nor there when trying to tease out why the speaker chose the ~느라 pattern from the various possibilities the language makes available.

I avoided commenting on the first of the naver examples, because I would really have liked to have more context before forming a view, and it does rather depend on how we flesh out the concrete situation behind the sentence in our imagination. However, if we assume that basic manners require us not to turn our head aside to conceal uncontrollable mirth, then turning aside would be a somewhat undesirable measure Yeong Hee was forced to take to avoid an even worse breach of etiquette by laughing in someone's face.

In other words, all the examples here and previously still strike me as consistent with my impression that ~느라 is generally chosen as an explanatory pattern when the speaker judges that the implied or stated consequence of the action thus marked was not wholly pleasant for the person who performed that action, _irrespective of whether that judgement is correct or not_. But I will be keeping my eyes and ears peeled from now on in the hope of spotting something that would count more strongly against that impression. And by "something" I mean of course more authentic examples, not abstract statements in dictionaries or grammars.

Though this morning, I did come across this in Yeon & Brown's_ Korean, A Comprehensive Grammar_ (2011), p270, section 6.1.8
"With ~느라[고], the first clause contains an ongoing continuous action. The second clause then expresses a negative or unexpected consequence of this action..."

They follow that with six examples, all of which on one way or another bear out the "negative or unexpected consequence" element in their commentary, though even with some of their own examples, I can't really see a necessarily "ongoing continuous action" in the first clause.

I say this not to cite an authority (because I am pretty sceptical about such "authorities", even though Yeon and Brown's grammar manual is by far the least dogmatic and most sensitive to real-world variation and nuance of the ones I know) but merely to show that my interpretation of this pattern isn't a mere personal eccentricity.

BUT what about the translation and examples on that page vientito pointed us to? I would really like to hear some native speakers' views on that, because I find it quite puzzling. Is this genuinely a pattern ~느라[고] or is it not just a pronunciational and spelling variant of ~노라[고] which I have always taken to be from a quite different word, related to 노력하다 and deriving from the Sino-Korean root 努 ["exert(ion), (make an) effort"] (though again we're in the territory of my private hitherto untested assumptions now...)

Whatever, it strikes me as very odd for that site to give this "Does one's best to try" sense as the sole meaning of the pattern ~느라[고] when this thread alone has made very plain that that pattern it has a much more common and significantly different usage.


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## Superhero1

조금만 said:


> But I will be keeping my eyes and ears peeled from now on in the hope of spotting something that would count more strongly against that impression. And by "something" I mean of course more authentic examples, not abstract statements in dictionaries or grammars.



I write some examples using -느라. I'll give my opinion tomorrow.

1. 동해에서 자전거가 펑크가 난 바람에 자전거를 끌고 걸어야만 했다. 한 고개, 두 고개를 넘어도 자전거를 고칠만한 마땅한 수리점은 보이지 않았다. 옷가지와 텐트를 챙기*느라 *여분의 타이어를 가져오는 것을 잊어버린 것이 안타까웠지만, 이것도 긴 여행의 일부라고 자족하며 오후 내 자전거와 동행을 했다.

2. 걸은 지 어느덧 30km를 훌쩍 넘었지만, 마을은 보이지 않았다. 목은 타들어 갔다. 시원한 물은 아니어도 좋았다. 단지 입을 축일 수 있는 액체라면 무엇이라도 좋았다. 다리의 힘은 풀린 지 오래고 어깨는 이미 무너져 내렸으나, 그의 눈은 물을 찾*느라* 그 어느 때보다 형형했다. 

3. 어제 오랜 친구에게서 결혼한다는 전화가 걸려왔다. 축하한다는 말과 함께 참석을 약속했다. 친구들은 하나 둘 결혼을 하는데, 나는 먹고 사는 문제에 매달리*느라* 결혼을 생각할 여력이 없었다.

4. 대한민국은 경제 성장에 치중하*느라* 역사와 철학 등의 인문학적 교육에 상대적으로 소홀했다. 선진국이 된다는 것은 비단 경제적 지표로만 이루어지는 것이 아니요, 그에 걸맞는 지식과 의식 함양이 수반되어야 한다.


p.s. The difference between 느라 and 느라고 is only the sound. Their meaning and functions are all the same. (I prefer using 느라 in writing) See you tomorrow!


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## vientito

my previous link has only shown one of the usages there is another one

http://www.koreangrammaticalforms.com/entry.php?eid=0000000525

if one cares to read through this 

http://krdic.naver.com/rescript_detail.nhn?seq=296

then it is obvious that 느라고 embeds two distinct interpretations.  so I think it's absolutely important to judge from the context as to which it truly belongs to.


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## ddungbo

@조금만: Can you explain what 'zero-clause' means? regarding this part of your thinking I honestly don't know what your point is. 

_However, it looks to me like two of those three new examples can both be construed as instances the same sort of elided second clause that puzzled me in the originally posted example._
_스파게티 만드느라 수고했어! _
_그간 공부하느라 애썼다._
_
Here the second verb, though it bears the tense markers and therefore looks like a normal result - consequence two-clause sequence, isn't a consequence clause at all. It's more a reaction or response to an elided, but understood, second clause_
_스파게티 만드느라 [zero clause] 수고했어! _
_그간 공부하느라 [zero clause] 애썼다.

_So what are the omitted components in these two sentences? Can you write the full version of those two so that I can at least get a glimpse at your idea obscured by terminologies? Other than the subjects of the each second verbs I don't think there are any elements that are left out from the sentences.

And more strikingly, why do you think 회사인데 소리 안내며 웃느라 is in the same format with those two?
회사인데 is very different from 회사에서. They expresses entirely different things. 회사에서 is a location phrase, usually manifested by prepositional phrase(in/at the office), and they are adverbials. 회사인데 doesn't even remotely express the same idea, instead it is about the current circumstance that the speaker is in. And the speaker is reporting it to other people. If someone wrote the original phrase on a website and people happened to read it, they would feel that the speaker is calling your attention to the circumstance that surrounds him, as sort of background information. It is similar in sense to 어 나 지금 회사인데, or 나 지금 회사에 있는데, or 회사에 있는데(~있는 중에). 
So actually I would construe 회사인데 as a separate, individual clause, 나 지금 회사에 있는데, 소리 안내며 웃느라 ...???...

Even so, how come 소리 안내며 웃느라 get the same structure analysis as 공부하느라 애썼다?

----------------------
I'm asking this because that's what I basically had in mind as the difference of the following two.

A. 시험 공부 하느라 친구를 만날 수 없다.
B. 회사인데 소리 안내며 웃느라 혼났다.

A. Because I had to prepare exams  ...
B. I was fighting myself not to laugh out loud.


Other than above, I entirely agree with your analysis. And I think you know Superhero unknowingly agrees with you with his example sentences.


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## Superhero1

The more we structurally approach to the '-느라'pattern, the more we can consider our regulation of making sentences, not just giving the simple explanation. The suggestion or explanation might be unnecessary for native speakers of Korean and what has been explained so far might be sufficient for learners of Korean. However, as a native speaker, more than thirty years using Korean and having written dissertation about Korean language, I doubt whether the following clause of -느라 always shows an undesirable result or not.


Let's see the previous example '수고했다' in terms of nuance. In the word '수고했다', we can separate it into the word 수고 which implies the meaning of hard work and suffering 'labour' and 했 which shows a deed for the subject, and 다 which is an ending. And the 수고 might entails an act of effort and suffering, but when connecting with '했다', its meaning is transformed to the meaning of compliment, so the meaning of 'suffering' disappear. This is similar to the phrasal verb or collocation in English, as like the formulae 1+1=3.


If you cannot accept the example of '수고했다', let us consider the expression '여념이 없다' which means being absorbed in sth in English. We mainly use this form as '~하느라 여념이 없다', where '여념' means 'useless thought or umimportant thought'. However, when it is combined with '없다', the combined expression'여념이 없다' gets the new meaning without its constituent[original] meaning. Native speakers of Korean don't learn each words when learnging Korean first, but they are repeatedly exposed to adults' use of '~하느라 여념이 없다' and they learn it as a one word, 'Being absorbed in'. When we analyse this phrase by each word, we will be far away from what we have actually learned.


Let's turn to the four examples above. Examples #1, #3 and #4 are common usage of '-느라', but #2 example is different from those examples. Brightening his eye to find water is not 'undesirable' or 'an uncomfortable situation', but is definitely 'desirable'. There's no unpleasant or troublesome and eventhough you analyse each word, the sentence doesn't reveal any regret or negative result. Through ddungbo's latest comment we can see the perspective of native language speaker . Put simply, we cannot recognise its slight difference when encountering '-느라'.


For instance, in the library, my friend asks me, 책 읽어?you read?. And I answer, 응, 그냥 뭐 좀 찾느라Yes, just find something. The question 'you read?' is just a salutation, and my answer뭐 좀 찾느라 shows the reason why I am reading the book now. This is one of the various usages of '-느라'.


To summarise the '-느라' pattern, I will use the 'hypothesis-substitution-conclusion' method below.

1. Hypothesis of '느라' for analysis 

Hyp1 :  S (V1+느라 V2)  Subject is only *ONE* person   (S: the subject  V1: verb1  V2: verb2)
hyp2 :  V1 explains the reason of V2
hyp3 : V2 is not desirable to the speaker of the sentence

2. substitution  
where S : Satisfaction  U : Unsatisfaction

회사인데 소리 안내며 웃느라 혼났다 (hyp1: S   hyp2: S    hyp3: S   ) 
청소하느라 벨소리를 못들었다. (hyp1: S  hyp2:  S   hyp3: S  )
공부하느라 전화를 받지 못했다. (hyp1: S  hyp2: S    hyp3: S  )
영희는 웃음을 참느라 딴 데를 보았다. (hyp1: S  hyp2: S    hyp3: S  )
그간 공부하느라 애썼다. (hyp1: S  hyp2: S   hyp3: U  )
그의 눈은 물을 찾느라 그 어느 때보다 형형했다. (hyp1: S  hyp2: S    hyp3: U  )
서울고등학교 학생들은 공부하느라 여념이 없었다. (hyp1: S  hyp2: S    hyp3: U  )
그녀와 함께 데이트를 하느라 시간 가는 줄 몰랐다. (hyp1: S  hyp2:  S   hyp3: U  )

3. Conclusion analysis

As seen from the substitution above, we can say only hypothesis1 and 2 are true. I tried to find the exeption for hyp1,2 , but I couldn't find. The possibility of hyp3 is decided by vocabularies so we can't say hyp3 is true.


As stated earlier in the introduction, '-느라' pattern includes outliers. The suggestion that there's lots of sentences satisfying hypothesis 1,2,3 is acceptible, but the some examples are different from those 'rule', so we should admit that language is not mathematics, but living organism.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For speakers of Korean.

‘-느라’ 패턴에 관한 문제를 구조적으로 접근할수록, 이에 대한 단순한 의미 설명에 그치지 않고 우리 국어의 조어 규칙에 대한 고찰을 하게 된다. 어쩌면 국어 화자들에게는 불필요할 수 있는 설명과 주장들이고, 우리가 단순히 ‘-느라’를 외국인에게 설명할 때는 지금까지 설명되었던 것들로 충분할 수도 있다. 그러나 삼십 년 이상을 한국어를 사용하고, 한국에 있을 때 그 한 줄기에 대한 논문을 썼던 나로서는, 과연  ‘-느라’ 의 후행구가 항상 바람직하지 못한 결과만을 드러내는가에 대한 의문을 갖게 했다.

이전에 예를 들었던 ‘수고했다’의 경우를 ‘뉘앙스’의 측면에서 살펴보자. 단일 단어로 ‘수고했다’의 경우, 노력과 고생의 의미를 내포하는 ‘수고’와 동작을 드러내는 선어말어미 ‘했’, 그리고 종결어미 ‘다’로 분석이 가능하다. 그리고 ‘수고’의 행위가 노력과 고생이 수반될 수 있으나, ‘수고’라는 단어가 ‘-했다’와 결합할 경우, 격려와 칭찬의 의미를 획득하면서 ‘고생스러움’의 의미가 사라진다. 이는 마치 영어의 collocation이나 phrasal verb와 같은데 모두 1+1=3 의 결과를 생성한다. 

‘수고했다’의 예를 납득하지 못하는 경우, 아래에서 다룰 ‘여념이 없다’를 생각해보자. 우리는 주로 ‘~하느라 여념이 없다’의 형태로 사용하는데,  여기서 ‘여념’은 ‘어떤 일에 대하여 생각하고 있는 것 이외의 다른 생각’이라는 의미이나, 이것이 ‘없다’와 결합하면서, ‘어떤 일에 대해 몰두하고 있다’라는 새로운 의미를 획득한다. 국어 화자들은 ‘여념’과 ‘없다’를 먼저 학습한 뒤에 결합하여 사용하는 것이 아니라, ‘~하느라 여념이 없다’의 활용 상황에 반복적으로 노출된 이후에, ‘몰두하다’의 대체어로서 자연스럽게 의미를 연상한다. 그러나 우리가 이를 각각의 단어를 분석하는 순간부터, 우리가 실제로 습득하고 익혔던 과정과는 반대편의 길을 걷게 된다.

윗글에 썼던 네 개의 예에 대한 부분으로 잠시 시선을 돌려보자. 1번과 3, 4번의 예는 사람들이 흔히 연상해내는 ‘-느라’의 용법이고, 2번의 예는 그것들과는 다르다. 물을 찾느라 눈이 형형해지는 것은 ‘바람직하지 못함’이나 어떤 ‘불편함’을 연상케 하는 것이 아니다. 문장 속의 인물이나 그 인물에 대해 기술한 사람 양자에게 모두 ‘바람직한’ 모습이고, 단어를 하나하나 분석해도 그 어떤 아쉬움이나 부정적인 결과를 드러내지 않는다. 이 예에 대한 국어 화자의 시각을 ddungbo의 마지막 코멘트가 잘 드러내주는데, 결론부터 말하자면, 우리는 ‘-느라’패턴의 약간씩 다른 모습에 대한 차이를 전혀 인식하지 못한다. 

도서관에서 만난 친구가 나에게 묻는다: ‘책 읽어?. ’ 나는 대답한다: ‘응, 그냥 뭐 좀 찾느라’.  책을 읽고 있냐는 질문은 의례적인 인사를 던진 것이고, 책을 읽고 있는 나는 행위에 이유에 대해서 답한다. 책을 읽냐는 질문에 ‘도대체 왜 책을 읽냐? 책을 읽지 않는 것이 바람직하다’는 의미가 내포된 것도 전혀 아니요, 나의 대답 역시, 책을 읽지 않고 다른 무언가를 했어야 한다는 아쉬움을 내포하지도 않는다. 이는 우리가 흔히 알고 있는 ‘-느라’의 사용과는 다른 형태이다.

난삽한 논의를 일정 부분 정리할 필요가 있다고 판단되어, ‘가정-대입-결론’의 방법을 사용해 분석했다.


1. ‘-느라’의 사용 연구를 위한 가정

1.1. 가정1
S (V1+느라  V2)        S : 주어, V1 : verb1  V2: verb2
여러 예를 살펴본 결과, ‘-느라’의 사용은 두 동작의 주어가 ‘동일인물’ 즉, 한 사람이어야만 의미가 자연스럽다.

1.2. 가정2
V1은 S의 V2에 대한 이유를 설명한다.

1.3.  가정3
 V2는 주어에게 바람직하지 않다는 화자의 생각이 깔려 있다.


2. 대입
회사인데 소리 안내며 웃느라 혼났다. (가정1 : 유효 가정2 : 유효 가정3: 유효)
청소하느라 벨소리를 못들었다.        (가정1 : 유효 가정2 : 유효 가정3: 유효)
공부하느라 전화를 받지 못했다.       (가정1 : 유효 가정2 : 유효 가정3: 유효)
영희는 웃음을 참느라 딴 데를 보았다.(가정1 : 유효 가정2 : 유효 가정3: 유효)
그간 공부하느라 애썼다.                (가정1 : 유효 가정2 : 유효 가정3 : 무효)
그의 눈은 물을 찾느라 그 어느 때보다 형형했다.   (가정1: 유효 가정2: 유효 가정3 : 무효)
서울 고등학교 학생들은 공부하느라 여념이 없었다.(가정1: 유효 가정2: 유효 가정3 : 무효)
그녀와 함께 데이트를 하느라 시간 가는 줄 몰랐다. (가정1: 유효 가정2: 유효 가정3 : 무효)

3. 결론 분석

위의 대입에서 봤듯이, 우리가 규칙화 가능한 부분은 가정1과 가정2이다. 가정 1과 2를 벗어나는 경우를 찾으려고 노력했지만 아직 발견되지 않았고, 가정3은 문장의 어휘에 따라 가부가 결정되는 바, 가정3을 하나의 규칙으로 포함할 수 없다.

앞서 서론에서 밝혔듯이 ‘-느라’의 형태는 뒤에 따르는 ‘여념이 없다’ 혹은 ‘시간 가는 줄 몰랐다’등의 관용어구에 의해, 일반적인 규칙에서 벗어나는 것을 확인 가능하다.  가정1,2,3 모두를 만족하는 표현이 압도적으로 많은 것은 사실이나, 다양한 언어 상황에서 일반적인 가정에서 벗어나는 사실도 있다는 점을 통해 ‘언어는 수학이 아니고 살아있는 유기체’라는 점을 다시 한번 확인케 하는 하나의 사례라고 본다.


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## ddungbo

First of all, Superhero, I give you that you're a researcher of this subject so you are more capable of a keen observation than I am. 
But believe or not, upon seeing your 4 example sentences above, I immediately ruled out #2 as not relating to any sort of negative undesirable effect. Except that one, all your example revealed that the phrase is associated with a note of negativeness.

From the very start of this discussion, by one sentence of 조금만's first post, I knew he was on the right track because of the way of his phrasing. He wrote, that implication is present *in* the *choice* of the expression, or something to this effect.

This one sentence grabbed me and I knew it was the gist of native speaker's intuition. Among numerous way of phrasing, if a native speaker particularly choose to use this phrase, I think it usually signals some negativeness. And I don't think you would argue against this.

Yes, true, I can produce lots of sentence that has nothing in sense to do with negativeness, but all I'm saying is the general tendency is found in the choice of this expression. A native speaker, you, produced, I don't know what 7 or 8 sentences and except one all were associated with negative connotation. Isn't the evidence sound enough?


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## Superhero1

ddungbo said:


> A native speaker, you, produced, I don't know what 7 or 8 sentences and except one all were associated with negative connotation. Isn't the evidence sound enough?



Do you think the sentence 7,8 are negative?


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## ddungbo

where is sentence 7, 8? I'm sorry if I made a confusion. I meant to say you produced (I don't know, 7 or 8 sentences?) and ...


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## Superhero1

Ah, I see. And I agree with overall exaplanation mentioned by 조금만 and you. I just wanted to show another exception.


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## 조금만

That was a really impressive piece of analysis by Superhero and to me a convincing demonstration that I should have been much more cautious in extrapolating from my very limited exposure to real-life Korean. (I won't say that it has warned me to be sceptical of grammar manuals, because I could hardly me more sceptical about those than I am already.) Not only has he done the readers of this thread a great service, but he has furnished an analysis and an example-set that deserve much wider attention wherever Korean is learned or taught an an advanced level.

What it also demonstrates is that some of the most justifiably respected reference sources could benefit from some revision in the light of what's been shown here.

I've since been able to do more rooting around in those sources. As I posted yesterday, Yeon & Brown's _Korean, A Comprehensive Grammar_ (2011), p270, section 6.1.8 says "With ~느라[고], the first clause contains an ongoing continuous action. The second clause then expresses a negative or unexpected consequence of this action..." and provides six supporting examples with nothing at all resembling the usages Superhero has now provided.

Volume 3 (Intermediate I) of the  KLEAR _Integrated Korean_ series introduces this pattern in Lesson 4 of that volume at section G4.6. The boxed-out gloss is "as a result of/while/because of ~ing" but that apparently neutral interpretation is qualified by two notes following the examples, and intended to apply to all of them.. (The third note observes that this pattern is used only with verbs and so isn't really germane to our interest here) The relevant notes are:
"1. ~느라고 ... indicates that the subject is performing one action at the expense of another.
2. ~느라고 is typically followed by an expression with negative implication. This indicates that the person is failing to carry out the action called for."

The "typically" in that second note adds a certain vague note of caution, but there's no such qualification in the claim in note 1 about one action being "at the expense" of the other. All four examples given fit in with this account. I'll just quote #3 here, since it's the briefest.
"A: 요즘 플프 쳐요?
 B: 아뇨. 요즘 인터넷하느라고 플프 질 시간이 없어요."
which carries the implication that the speaker would indeed like to find time to play golf, but his leisure periods are being pre-empted by his surfing. Not on this forum, one hopes.

Choo & Kwak's treatment of this specific pattern in _Using Korean_  (2008) is the briefest I found in the various leading reference works, but it is part of a long section (21.2.5, pp. 286-290) in which they cover no less than ten patterns used for different forms specifying cause or reason for an action. Their gloss for this particular pattern is the apparently wholly neutral "as a result of doing something", but in two of their examples the result of the action marked with ~느라 is something the speaker accepts is unavoidable, but not in itself desirable, the first one being: "이삿짐을 싸느라고 그동안 정신없었어요", while the third is another of those instances which I am inclined to analyze as containing an implicit second clause folowed by a formulaic remark by which the speaker acknowledges the trouble the person addressed has been put to as an implied consequence of the appreciated action: "먼길 오시느라고 수고하셨습니다"

So here, though we have a neutral description, the actual examples chosen exhibit the more restrictive sense which the previous texts cited categorically claim this pattern bears. 

The same thing seems to apply to Martin, _A Reference Grammar of Korean_ (1992) which distinguishes two separate items with distinct meanings (p. 722: transcribing Martin's examples from Yale romanization into Hangeul ties my brain and fingers in knots, so apologies in advance if my typo count rises even higher in the portion of my post)

1. 느라 with or without 고, specified as "processive adjunctive",  which he glosses as "what with doing, as a result of doing" with examples 공부 하느라 잠 잘 새가 없다 and 점심 먹느라 늦었다, where both the consequences explained by the 느라 clause are plainly not altogether desirable, and
2. ~느라 with or without 고, a pattern he specifies slightly differently as  "processive adjunctive + particle", which in the conventions he uses means that he regards the presence of the 고 as the norm in this case and its absence as an instance of "dropping", and nearly all of his examples of this item have the 고. Here he distinguishes three sub-groups of meanings. 

The first is synonymous with ~느라 in the sense ("what with doing"), so it's hard to see why he regards it as a separate item at all. The second, with by far the largest number of examples, which I won't attempt to transcribe in their entirety, seems to be the item referred to in that web page where it was glossed as "one does one's very best to try to VERB", though Martin glosses it more generally as "with the idea to do, with the intention of doing,  trying to do". Representative of Martin's examples of this usage are 짐을 꾸리느라고 야단들이다  ("...trying to get their bags packed" in his gloss) and 저마다 먼저 나가느라고 서러 떼 민다  (..."trying to get out first"). So Martin provides support for what we find on the first web page vientito linked to under the pattern, though he does so while making plaing that this is not the only sense of the pattern. 

The third sense Martin indicates, glossed as "because, frustratingly enough..." he prefixes with a question mark, his convention whenever a scholar he regards as in principle trustworthy has cited a meaning without providing an attesting reference or example, and Martin himself has been unable to locate such an example. In this case, Martin found this sense in Dupont and Millot's _Grammaire Coréene_, Seoul 1965, p.152, a work to which I have no access at the moment.

From which I conclude that (a) those grammar references sources which  claim there is always some element of "negativity" in the consequence or result clause are in need of revision; and (b) that sources which give a "neutral" discursive account of the pattern's meaning should update or expand their chosen examples to include a wider range of instances such as those Superhero has provided. Otherwise, since all these examples currently show more or less negative connotations in the "consequences" clause, some of them plainly, all of them arguably,  readers may be misled into thinking that these examples actually support the more restrictive claims made in other sources, even if the discursive general account of their meaning does not. 

However, I am still struck by the fact that when all those compilers set about choosing representative illustrations for their manuals, they settled overwhelmingly or even exclusively on instances which seem to bear out the "negative connotation" interpretation, even when their discursive explanations made no mention of it. So I do think we learners need to have this aspect brought to our attention when we are trying to interpret the choices of expression native speakers make, something which purely "neutral" explanations fail to do.


I also wanted to respond, as part of this posting, to ddungo's main posting today, but the software complains this posting is too long, so I will have to make that a separate item.


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## 조금만

Carrying on from where the software cut me off...

To respond to ddungbo's main posting today, which also clears up many confusions (most of them introduced, as usual, by me)...

I think I started a red herring with this zero clause business. I wasn't intending to claim that the structure of 소리 안내며 웃느라 was in any way similar to 공부하느라 애썼다 or 스파게티 만드느라 수고했어. I was trying to pin down my sense that Superhero's argument that those latter two instances showed a plainly positively-valued state of affairs as the consequence of the ~느라-marked verb didn't quite work. What I was trying to say by introducing a phantom zero clause to the analysis was that in these cases neither 애썼다 nor 수고했어 were the consequent clauses of the ~느라 clause, despite their position in the sequence. Rather, the appreciation being offered in those words came from recognizing the expenditure of effort that had been required to make the spaghetti or achieve academic success, which could have been inserted as a genuine consequent clause (you cooked for me and so couldn't watch TV, you studied hard and so couldn't play soccer....) between the ~느라 clause and the expression of gratitude/congratulation, though in practice it didn't need to be. Or, to come at it in a slightly different angle, the 애썼다 and the 수고했어 were only able to stand in the spot otherwise occupied in other examples by the consequence clause because that clause wasn't explicitly present, though it was implied. I would still stand by my analyses of those particular examples, though in the light of Superhero's subsequent additional examples and analyses they are no longer of much signficance to the overall question.

The only common feature I thought I saw between the original posted example and those particular examples of Superhero's re spaghetti etc was that the sentence as presented was in some sense incomplete. But Superhero's examples could only be called "incomplete" in that their surface pattern arguably didn't make their internal structure plain, whereas the original example was incomplete in the more basic sense that there was a word missing. Once Superhero supplied that word it was plain that although I was correct in sensing that something was left out, I couldn't have been more wrong than my conclusion that it was an entire clause, rather than a verb for which 소리 안내며 웃느라 could then be seen to function as a kind of clausal object, completing the structural whole that had completely evaded me.

I guess my tendency to wade in right away whenever a posting catches my attention led me astray once again. I just hope other people don't follow me down too many misdguided paths, and I'm especially grateful to ddungbo for pulling me out of the swamp here.

Finally, although the naver Q & A item posted by vientito is well worth reading, I'm not sure it's directly relevant to our main point. The questioner there was seeking clarification about the basic distinction between between the ~느라 and the -어서 patterns, and the answer focusses on supplying that (above all, it addresses the questioner's puzzlement that in some circumstances the two patterns seem interchangeable, while in others they plainly aren't.) The answer explains this by pointing out that that that the indication of temporal sequence in ~어서 gives "영희를 만나서 학교에 가지 못했다" the meaning "Because I [first] met Jeong Hee I couldn't [subsequently] go to school" whereas in 영희를 만나느라고 학교에 가지 못했다, a meeting with Jeong Hee, which hasn't taken place, and which the speaker apparently wants to avoid, would have been the consequence (or purpose) of going to school. However, in the original example furnished by the questioner, "잠을 자서 숙제를 못 했다" is more or less equivalent in meaning to "잠을 자느라고 숙제를 못 했다" because whether we say, using ~어서, that falling asleep was the direct prior cause of the homework not getting done or, using ~느라, that not doing the homework was a concomitant phenomenon of being fast asleep amounts to the same thing. The answer, focussing on that basic logical distinction, doesn't venture into the thickets of nuance that we became entangled in here. And in order to avoid being dragged back in, I really should refrain from pointing out that in these examples, too, not going to school and not doing your homework are consequences of a somewhat negative kind...


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## vientito

Just one last question for the native speakers to get a feel for its register.  Given that there are many ways in the language to state the ground and reason of doing something, is 느라고 a fairly common occurrence in oral exchanges (not just among academics but for common folks as well) ?  I would definitely not want to sound like a book when I speak.


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