著者
泉井 久之助 羅 鐘浩
出版者
The Linguistic Society of Japan
雑誌
言語研究 (ISSN:00243914)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.1968, no.52, pp.1-32, 1968-01-31 (Released:2010-11-26)
参考文献数
71

The prevailing vowel system of Middle Korean consisted of a group of wide vowels (a, ∧, o), a group of narrow vowels (∂, i, u), and a neutral vowel (i). The formation of words was then performed strictly according to the vowel harmony based on these groupings. However, there were several, or rather many word pairs of which the formation was realized either with wide vowels or narrow ones without seemingly diverging in their meanings or meaning shades.In early modern Korean where the system began to decay and the harmony ceased to operate, the word pairs with alternation of vowels wide and nerrow have feen fixed in their respective forms diverging more clearly in their meaning or acceptation one member from the other of the pair. Many pairs of this kind can be found still in cantemporary Korean language.The vowel system of Korean is generally far different from those of many Uralic and Altaic languages, even from that which is presupposed by Izui to have been in archaic Japanese.Works of many scholars of contemporary Korea are cited and consulted here.