Previously I thought there is no structural difference between adjectives and verbs in Korean, since all Korean words which are translated as adjectives into English are actually verbs which express the quality of being described by a given English adjective, and are conjugated almost the same as action verbs. Almost.
However, I was told that the functional suffixes for those two kinds of verbs are not always the same. Upon further research, I got to know that the action verb 쓰다
, when written as such, is just an infinitive, while its simplest present tense form is 쓴다
. Likewise, the most informal way to tell "I read" is 읽는다
, while 읽다
is just an infinitive. But the infinitive and the plain present tense of an "adjectival" verb is the same, thus 작다
is both "to be small" and "(it) is small".
And when both kinds of verbs play the role of a relative clause (preceding the noun they qualify as an additional information to it), their endings, which give those relative clauses a kind of verbal tense, aren't exactly the same or do not mean the same thing. 읽는 여자
is "a girl who reads" and 읽은 여자
is "a girl who read (in the past)", but "a small girl" goes as 작은 여자
and "a girl who was small" translates as 작던 여자
.
What category does the verb 없다
fall into, then? On one hand, I found its relative clause present form as 없는
(which can sometimes be translated as "without"), but on the other hand I found sample phrases showing 없다
(rather than 없는다) as "there isn't...". This seems to be a contradiction, since the first ending applies to action verbs, and the second ending applies to descriptive verbs.
However, since 없다
can also be translated as "(to be) absent", it's not evident whether it is an action verb or a descriptive verb. So?