Phonetics and Speech Sciences (말소리와 음성과학)

Korean Society of Speech Sciences (한국음성학회)
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Transition of vowel harmony in Korean verbal conjugation: Patterns of variation in a spoken corpus

구어 말뭉치를 통한 한국어 용언활용에서의 모음조화 변이 및 변화 추이 연구

  • Hijo Kang (Department of English Language Education, Chosun University)
  • 강희조 (조선대학교 영어교육과)
  • Received : 2023.05.20
  • Accepted : 2023.06.14
  • Published : 2023.06.30
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Abstract

This study investigates the transitional aspect of vowel harmony in Korean verbal conjugation. By observing the patterns of harmonic and disharmonic tokens of 42 verbal stems searched for in the National Institute of Korean Language (NIKL) Korean Dialogue Corpus 2020/2021, I found that disharmonic tokens appeared less than 0.1% of time, most of which consisted of an /a/-stem with a monosyllabic sentence-final suffix. It was noted that disharmonic pattern started to spread to other suffixes and possibly to /o/-stems. A simple perception test showed that the disharmonic forms might have originated from vowel reduction or undershoot. These results suggest that the ongoing change is accounted for from both the articulatory and perceptual perspectives.

이 논문은 현대 한국어 용언활용에서 모음조화 양상에서 보이는 변이(조화형과 비조화형의 공존)가 어떤 언어 내적/외적 변수들에 의해 통제되고 있는지 확인하여 그 변화의 발동과 전파 과정을 설명하려는 연구이다. 이를 위하여 국립국어원 발행 일상 대화 음성 말뭉치를 활용하여 42개 어간의 조화형 및 비조화형을 검색한 후 음운/형태적 특성 및 사회언어학적 특성에 따른 효과를 검증하였다. 그 결과 전반적으로 비조화형의 비율이 1% 미만으로 매우 낮게 나타났으며 대부분은 /ㅏ/-모음 어간이 단모음 종결 어미와 결합한 사례임을 확인하였다. 다만 기존 연구들에서 거의 보이지 않던 연결 어미나 선어말 어미의 경우에도 비조화형이 소수 나타났다. 말뭉치에서 발견된 /ㅗ/-모음 어간의 비조화형을 자료로 삼아 청취실험을 실시하여 비조화형의 발동이 음운 감쇄나 과소 실현에 의해 일어났을 가능성을 보였다. 다만 전파되는 과정에는 모음의 변별도나 형태적 분석과 같은 인지적 관점에서의 설명이 더 나음을 주장한다. 결과적으로 현대 한국어의 모음조화 변이 및 변화는는 조음적/인지적 요인이 복합적으로 작용되었다고 본다.

Keywords

References

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