Earticle

The purpose of this study is to re-examine the ‘i’ category as adjective focused on the negational form of the ‘derivational noun(N+적)+ida’. In the previous studies, the negational form of ‘ida’ has been regarded as ‘anida’ exclusively, however, the predicative nucleus of ‘ida’ construction is not ‘i’ but the element before ‘i’, therefore the negational form of ‘i’ can be changed according to the preceding element of ‘i’, such as ‘-지 않-’ in the case of ‘derivational noun(N+적)’. ‘derivational noun(N+적)’ is the most marked among the nouns which are located before ‘i’, it has adjectival meaning due to ‘-적’ and shows the long negational form ‘-지 않-’ like adjective. Although the ‘i’ shows the characteristics of adjective like long negational form, the word class of ‘i’ can not be adjective. The reasons are such as followings: First, the preceding element of ‘i’, such as ‘derivational noun(N+적)’ is the morphological and syntactical nucleus, so the ‘i’ is not the lexical category, but the functional category. Second, there are great differences between the general adjectives and ‘i’. Third, ‘derivational noun(N+적)+ida’ corresponds to adjective or verb from the perspective of contrastive linguistics, so the ‘i’ solely cannot be adjective excluding ‘derivational noun(N+적)’. Fourth, if the copula ‘i’ would be adjectives, it disagrees with the characteristics of the korean language as verb-like adjectives which functions as predicate without copula.

This research aims to analyze quantitative and qualitative developmental aspects of adjective expressions according to grades and genders of school-aged children. We collected descriptive texts of 72 typically developing children through a writing test on a topic: My Friend. Then, we analyzed frequencies and semantic categories of adjectives embedded in their texts. For frequency analysis, we dealt with not only adjective variables(NTA, NDA), but also text length(NTW), and numbers of nouns(NTN) and verbs(NTV). For semantic categories, we analyzed the distribution of adjective meanings according to grades and genders after matching meanings of adjectives to conceptual nodes of CoreNet. As a result, all of variables were significantly increased according to grades except ratio of verbs. In gender comparison, girls generally used adjectives more than boys. For semantic categories of adjectives, the higher grade is, the more objective adjectives were used. These findings implicate that semantic categories and their characteristics need to be considered for evaluating and improving use abilities of adjectives in writing of school-aged children.

Korean is known to have a well-developed honorification system, which is observed to be composed of strategic as well as normative honorification rules. Given this, how to treat the so-called hearer honorific si, which is to honor the hearer, not to honor the subject NP predicated with the verb with si, has been a quite controversial issue in recent years. National Institute of Korean Language and the media are labeling this usage, which is mostly observed in the service context, as a serious language misuse. In contrast, quite a few Korean linguists analyze it as a strategic usage extended from the Korean honorification system. In this context, the purpose of this paper is to reinvestigate whether it is a legitimate usage or an overuse of honorifics. The results of a survey that has been conducted to provide an answer to the issue shows that this is a quite complicated phenomenon, but that Korean language users seem to maintain a quite clear intuition on the distinction between appropriate and inappropriate uses of honorification. It will be proposed that the licensing of si is scalar, which should be accounted for by the direct link between the predication with si and a human NP.

The aim of this study is to investigate production of consonant clusters by Korean young children from three to six years old. Fifty-three Korean children participated in an imitation production task and their speech productions were transcribed. In order to examine the process of acquisition their speech errors were analyzed and divided into 5 types: consonant deletion, epenthesis, substitution, coalescence and combination. The results of transcription and error analysis are as follows: 1) As the children are getting old, the number of consonant deletion in consonant cluster is decreasing. 2) Among the five different error types, vowel insertion is the most frequent, and it is more frequent in the voiced stop and liquid clusters than in the voiceless stop and liquid clusters. 3) Velars, the first consonant in the clusters, tend to replaced by bilabials, whereas the second consonant, liquids are likely to be substituted with glides. 4) /p/and /r/ can coalesce into /ʃ/. 5) More than one types of errors can be combined and produced in the consonant clusters. Based on the results of this study, some implications for the acquisition of consonant clusters were drawn.

The present study concerns the nature of the generative mechanism of Korean neologisms combined with English. Focusing on morphological word formation patterns and generative characteristics, this paper analyzes newly-coined words containing English morphemes. First, the examination shows that the portion of newly-coined mixtures of Korean and English generated by compounding and blending was the highest. Also, shortening forms generated by economic principles undergo multiple word-formation processes such as combination or derivation after shortening or blending. A strong tendency of affixation is probed. Every prefix is in Korean with a single syllable whereas suffixes are not the case. Interestingly, not only can lexical morphemes be acted as affixes(e.g. -look as in "여신룩, 재벌룩"), but clipped forms of them are also used just like affixes(e.g. -ting<meeting as in "눈팅, 번개팅"). Especially, "gae-", meaning a dog in Korean, is frequently used as a prefix or an intensifier to emphasize the meaning of the root as in "개굿(very good), 개리얼(very real)", which is also used a root as in "개드립, 패드립, 꿀드립“. Accordingly, it is found that there is an ambiguous boundary between an affix and a root in blending of Korean and English. Another finding is that English words are treated as a noun when they are newly coined with Korean words. Further, it demonstrates that using a common syllable structure through analogy and substitution plays a considerably significant role in lexical productivity. Ultimately, this paper proves the impulse to invent new words out of preexisting elements is a latent feature of language, which is caused by language users' psychology of enjoying linguistic playfulness by creating new expressions continuously out of preexisting cliches.