흉내말의 어말 자음 교체에 대한 기능적 연구

Abstract

This study recognizes a phenomenon of the alternation of the word-final consonant of a symbolic word in Korean language as its major characteristics and aims to look into its system and actual condition. For this purpose, it drew up a total list of the alternation of the word-final consonant and inquired into its system of correspondence. As a result, a total of 10 alternations of consonant, ‘ㄱ–ㄹ,’ ‘ㄱ–ㅁ,’ ‘ㄱ–ㅅ,’ ‘ㄱ–ㅇ,’ ‘ㄴ–ㄹ,’ ‘ㄴ–ㅁ,’ ‘ㄴ–ㅅ,’ ‘ㄹ–ㅅ,’ ‘ㅁ:ㅅ’ and ‘ㅁ:ㅇ.’ There is no clearly systematic characteristic of the alternation of the word-final consonant. However, it has a tendency to take place actively between consonants in the same place of articulation. Of seven word-final codas, only ‘ㅂ’ does not make consonant alternation. In the definition in a Korean dictionary, it is hard to find a correlation between the existing interpretation of sound symbolism for each consonant and its actual definition. However, in onomatopoeia, final consonant ‘ㅇ’ deserves interpretation that it has a feature of [an echo] while in mimetic words, final consonant ‘ㅅ,’ a feature of [incompletion]. In the definition in the Korean dictionary did not seriously considers the pairs of the alternation of the final-word consonant. Certain types of the alternation of the final-word consonant tend to show a higher frequency of one of the two. In ‘ㄱ–ㅇ,’ ‘ㅇ’ shows superiority of use; and in ‘ㄹ–ㅅ,’ ‘ㅅ’ shows clear superiority of use. This can be referred to in establishing the underlying forms of the final-word consonant alternation or defining it in the Korean dictionary.