Breakdown of ellibeiteoga gojang nan geos gatayo.
~가~ga
subject particle
것geos
thing
엘리베이터ellibeiteo
elevator
고장나다gojangnada
to break down
Questions & Answers about ellibeiteoga gojang nan geos gatayo.
What does 고장 나다 mean, and how is it constructed?
고장 is a noun meaning breakdown or malfunction. When you add 나다 (to occur), it forms the intransitive verb 고장 나다, to break down or to stop working. In this construction, the thing that breaks (here, the elevator) is the subject experiencing the breakdown.
Why is 가 used after 엘리베이터 instead of 은/는?
가 marks 엘리베이터 as the grammatical subject, focusing on what happened to it. If you used 은/는, you’d turn it into the topic or imply contrast. For example, 엘리베이터는 고장 난 것 같아요 can sound like “As for the elevator (but maybe not the escalator), it seems broken.”
Why isn’t there an object marker 을/를 after 고장?
In 고장 나다, 고장 is part of a single intransitive verb phrase, not a direct object. 나다 here means “to occur,” so 고장 나다 means “a breakdown occurs.” You don’t separate 고장 with 을/를 because it’s not the object of the action—it’s the cause of the verb.
Why is it 고장 난 것 같다 instead of 고장 났다 것 같다 or 고장 나요 것 같다?