The classification of the Korean language and its dialects (original) (raw)

Korean dialects: a general survey

2012

The Korean language is relatively homogeneous and the dialects from different areas can be mutually intelligible to a great extent. Nevertheless, the dialects of Korean exhibit considerable variety in phonology, morphology, and vocabulary. They are finely differentiated into a number of areas based on regional differences. There is no obvious correlation between the modern dialects and the ancient historical divisions of Korea, i.e. the Three Kingdom period. Silla and Paekche roughly coincide with the current southeastern dialect and southwestern dialect respectively, but northeastern, northwestern, central, and Cheju dialects cannot be correlated with any one ancient historical kingdom in Korea. Since Korea is mountainous, the language is quite naturally divided finely into different dialects according to topography. Most scholars seem to agree on six major dialectal zones based roughly on different geographical regions:

Korean: Some sociolinguistic characteristics

1. Introduction 1.1. Number and location of speakers 1.2. Area and population 2. Writing system and romanization 2.1. History 2.2. Consonants 2.2.1. Basic consonant symbols 2.2.2. Modified consonant symbols 2.3. Vowels 2.3.1. Basic vowel symbols 2.3.2. Modified vowel symbols 2.4. Syllable structure 2.5. Romanization systems 2.5.1. Proper nouns 2.5.2. Place names 3. Geographic variation 3.1. Names for Korea(n) 3.2. Dialects 3.3. North vs. South Korean 4. Language contact 4.1. Chinese and Japanese 4.2. Western languages 5. Cultural aspects of language use: honorification 5.1. Pronouns 5.2. Titles 5.3. Speech styles 5.4. Lexicon

Diaspora varieties of Korean: Morpho-syntactic contrasts in Koryo Mar and Vernacular Yanbian Korean☆

Lingua, 2019

This paper identifies and examines numerous points of morpho-syntactic contrast in two transplanted varieties of Korean-Central Asian Koryo Mar (KM) and Chinese Vernacular Yanbian Korean (VYK). This allows us to evaluate implicit claims made about the synchronic forms of these dialects, for example those concerning their relationship to peninsula varieties of Korean, and also provides insights into the factors underlying the development of languages in transplanted contexts. The main findings of this paper confirm that KM and VYK's shared features, such as particle forms and verb endings, are strongly associated with the North Hamgyeong and Yukchin varieties of Korean and their common dialectological origins in the North East of the Korean peninsula. The longevity of these features suggests a 'founder effect' in the development of these transplanted varieties.

Typological comparison of The English and The Korean languages Linguistic Typology (MA

Linguistic typology is a branch of linguistics that attempts to categorize languages based on similarities in structure (phonological inventories, grammatical constructions, word order, etc.)This research is dedicated to the typological comparison of The English Language and The Korean Language. The main focus is to identify similarities or differences between the two languages. There are included general information about the languages ; their characteristics ; phonetics (sound system), lexicology( word stock and word formation, morphological ( part of speeches), syntax( sentence structure), as well as intro-linguistic and extra-linguistic history of them. Writing system is different, The Korean language actually uses characters which are called together Hangul(their national alphabet), and The English language uses Latin alphabet. Both languages are historically rich, have passed long history of development and troubles sometimes.

Korean by Ho-min Sohn. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. xvii, 584 pp. Descriptive Grammars

Issues in applied linguistics, 1994

Korean is a descriptive grammar book for language teachers, students, and scholars of Korean linguistics. Since Korean is a comprehensive reference book which provides a broad and detailed description of the structure of the language in a theory-neutral manner, it is useful to Korean linguists of any theoretical orientation, while still extremely accessible to students studying the language beyond the elementary level. Korean is one of a series of Descriptive Grammars edited by Bernard Comrie, and follows the basic framework of the Questionnaire^designed by Comrie and Smith (1977) as a detailed guide for cross-linguistic analyses. Thus, all of the descriptive grammars of the series (e.g.. Gulf Arabic, Finnish, Tamil, Japanese) have identical or near identical chapter headings, sub-headings, and subsub-headings. Chapter headings are arranged in the following order: Chapter 1, Syntax; Chapter 2, Morphology; Chapter 3, Phonology; Chapter 4, Ideophones and Interjections; and Chapter 5, Lexicon. Given that the framework was set up for linguists to compare languages, I would also like to review this book by comparing it with another in the series, Japanese by John Hinds (1986). I chose these two books since both languages are hypothesized to belong to the Altaic language family as pointed out by both H. Sohn (1994, p. 1) and Hinds (1986, p. v). Students or scholars interested in both languages could use these two books as a departure point for comparative studies in almost any area of linguistics, from tense and aspect studies to interjections and socio-linguistics. Korean was published in 1994, eight years following the publication of Japanese, and, therefore includes developments in terms of the series format (cf. Martin, 1988). In the more recent Korean, an editorial statement is provided by Comrie which summarizes the purpose and background of the Descriptive Language Series. Also, H. Sohn has added a very useful index and the table of contents seems to be more detailed than that of Japanese, so that now particular linguistic topics are more readily searchable. Perhaps the addition of an index of Korean expressions and constructions would make this an even more useful reference book, since there is no way to locate specific grammatical forms in Korean. For example, if one were searching for the possible sentence structures or contexts in which ci(yo) (an interactional particle) is used, one would virtually have to guess under which subsection it would appear and begin the search from Issues in Applied Linguistics

A Description of Korean Converbs and their Northeast Asian Context

This paper is a study of Korean converbs in relation to the neighboring languages of Northeast Asia. It is based on the descriptive and theoretical advances made in modern linguistics and provides an extensive analysis of the key issues regarding converbs in Korean as well as ten other neighboring languages. The thesis consists of five sections including an introduction and conclusion. The introduction consists of a background of the converb and its use in typological settings. Chapter 1 is subdivided into three parts, the first of which describes exactly what forms can be considered converbs in Korean and relates them to their traditional description in Korean grammar. This is followed by a description of Korean converbs categorized into those containing or lacking temporal values. Chapter 1 concludes with a short section regarding the origins and evolutionary paths of converbs. Chapter 2 is a comparison of the Korea data above with converbs in neighboring languages. These languages can be roughly grouped into two sets, the Transeurasian languages and the Protoasiatic languages, neither a language family in the traditional sense. Chapter 3 consists of a discussion on several trends within the converbal systems on Northeast Asian languages. The paper ends with a short conclusion. The Korean data is not atypical for the region. While it is true that Korean has a larger than average number of converbs, this is not unique to Korean for Nivkh contains nearly the same number. Korean’s lack of different-subject converbs and the paucity of posterior converbs is the overall trend for the region. It is also common for a language to have one highly contextual converb with a wide variety of possible interpretations. Keywords: Korean, Converbs, Northeast Asia, Transeurasian, Paleoasiatic, Linguistic Typology

Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics

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