Grammar
N(으)로 좁히다
Meaning
AdvancedN(eu)ro jophida
N(으)로 좁히다 says that a gap has been brought down to the size named in the (으)로 phrase. The number after 로 is what is LEFT, not what was taken away: 격차를 0.5경기차로 좁혔습니다 means half a game now separates the two teams, and says nothing about how big the gap was before. Standings, polling and market reports lean on this, and reading it the other way puts the two sides in the wrong relation. Beyond distances and margins the verb is also used of things that narrow figuratively — 범위를 좁히다 (to narrow the scope), 후보를 세 명으로 좁히다 (to narrow the field to three).
Form
The frame is A가 B를 C로 좁히다: the one closing the gap is the subject, what narrows (격차, 차이, 범위, 후보) takes 을/를, and the size it ends at takes 로 after a vowel or a ㄹ-final noun and 으로 after any other consonant — 2점으로, 0.5경기차로, 세 명으로. 좁히다 is built from the adjective 좁다 (to be narrow) with the -히- suffix, so it means 'make narrow' and always needs an object; this is what sets it apart from the passives it sits beside in this family, which have no object at all. Common finished forms in news are 좁혔습니다 and 좁혔다, with the modifier 좁힌. When the gap is simply reported as having closed, without naming who closed it, Korean uses 좁혀지다 instead.
Examples
격차를 2점으로 좁혔습니다.
They narrowed the gap to two points.
From: KIA Beat Doosan 6-1 to End Their Losing Run, and Yang Hyeon-jong Takes His 8th Win
심사위원단은 최종 후보를 세 팀으로 좁혔습니다.
The judging panel narrowed the final shortlist to three teams.
야당 후보는 여당 후보와의 지지율 차이를 3%포인트로 좁혔습니다.
The opposition candidate narrowed the gap in support with the ruling party's candidate to three percentage points.
Common mistakes & nuance
English pulls readers the wrong way here. 'Narrowed the gap to two points' and 'narrowed the gap by two points' differ by one small word, and only the first is what 2점으로 좁혔다 says — the particle 로 marks the size that remains. A reader who takes the number as the amount of the reduction has to invent a current gap to make the sentence work, and in a league table that means putting the wrong team in front. The second thing to keep in mind is that this verb is active and transitive even where the sentence reads like a description of a state: 격차를 좁히다 takes 를, so there is always a subject doing the narrowing, stated or understood, which the neighbouring N(으)로 patterns (선정되다, 구성되다, 나뉘다) never have.
Similar grammar
- N에서 N(으)로
Both end at the same kind of (으)로 — the state a figure arrives at — but they hand you different amounts of information. N에서 N(으)로 gives both endpoints and lets you subtract (41.1%에서 45.2%로 높아졌습니다). N(으)로 좁히다 gives only the endpoint; the gap before is not in the sentence, and if you need it you have to get it from the surrounding article. The frames combine, too: 격차를 3점에서 2점으로 좁혔다 fills the missing half back in.
- N보다 N 줄다
The two split the same event between them, and each withholds what the other supplies. N보다 N 줄다 gives a baseline and the size of the change, leaving the new level for the reader to work out; N(으)로 좁히다 gives the new level and leaves the size of the change unsaid. This is exactly the confusion the number after 로 causes, so it is worth reading them side by side: in one pattern the number is a difference, in the other it is a level.