A Quantitative Linguistic Study on the Functional load of Phonemes in Standard Korean

한국어 음소의 기능부담량 - 계량 언어학적 연구

Not all linguistic units are of equal importance in the functioning of language. The present study aims to examine He functional load of phonemes in standard Korean, To achieve this goal, B analysed continuous texts selected from the textbooks of elementary school on a personal computer. The total number of syllables studied in this thesis is 101,637. The characteristics of the Korean syllable structures are as follows. 1) In a syllable head, /n/ occurs most frequently. 2) The frequencies of syllables with an onset are much higher than those with no onset ( 85% : 15% ), 3) In a syllable head, obstruents are preferred because their consonantal strength are great, (57%) 4) In a syllable nucleus, /a/ occurs most frequently. 5) The rate of occurrence of the monophthongs is 90.2%, and that of the diphthongs is 9.8%. Especially the three basic vowels(/i,a,u/) occur at the rate of 46.6%. 6) In a syllable coda, /n/ occurs most frequently. 7) The open syllables are favored (open syllable 68.7%, closed syllable 31.3%).