수화언어와 음운중첩현상

Abstract

Korean linguists have paid relatively little attention in studies on Korean Sign Langauge (KSL). This paper tries to fill this descriptive gap by reviewing and comparing the structural description of American Sign Language (ASL) to KSL and by presenting some data of KSL. The purpose of this paper is to compare KSL with ASL and Korean as a spoken language with respect to a process of reduplication. In order to examine this comparison, section 2 gives a brief review of the structural description of signs, particularly in minimal pair tests, segments, and syllable structures. Section 3 provides data of reduplication used in both spoken and signed languages and then tries to find out the differences and similarities between these languages. Section 4 summarizes findings discussed in the previous sections. The following are summarized findings: (1) Reduplication processes in both ASL and KSL seem to be properly stated in terms of syllable repetition, regardless of types of movement. (2) While spoken languages and ASL possess both a complete reduplication and a partial reduplication, KSL seems to use a complete reduplication only. (3) Contrary to spoken languages and ASL, KSL seems to make unproductive use of the process of reduplication. (4) Unlike ASL, KSL has no derivational processes like reduplication since nouns and verbs are the same forms in KSL. This paper is a preliminarily research on KSL. Further subsequent research should be required in the near future.