Abstract
This paper tries to elucidate the asymmetric distribution of stem-final coronal (SFC) obstruent codas in the nouns of Contemporary Korean (CK) by documenting their historical development from Middle Korean (fifteenth to sixteenth centuries, MK). Examination of historical data suggests that there was an intermediate stage in Korean in which [s] was far and away the most prevalent phonetic value and thus triggered analogical extension to other SFCs through a stage of free variation between [s] and [t]. Subsequent developments involving the completion of the occlusivization of [s] obscure this state of affairs. Two other factors which resulted in the biased distribution of SFCs in CK are also pointed out: (1) the simplification of SFCs’ oppositions in polysyllabic words based on their near-complementary distribution and (2) the type-frequency of MK SFCs, which takes into account compound words as well as simplex (= non-compound) words.
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Ito, C. Analogy and lexical restructuring in the development of nominal stem inflection from Middle to Contemporary Korean. J East Asian Linguist 19, 357–383 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10831-010-9066-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10831-010-9066-8