한자 ‘病’으로 끝난 단어들의 조어법과 경음화

Abstract

The Chinese character byeong (病) in the last syllable of a Korean word is pronounced with initial /p/ or /p’/. /p’/ is the result of fortition. It has been studied if the fortition can be described as a phonological rule. The condition that governs the rule has been supposed to be related to the meaning or function of byeong, saisiot (ㅅ) or word-formation. This paper suspects word-formation of the cause of the fortition. Sino-Korean words are of two types, the one based on Old Chinese grammar and the other based on Present-day Korean word-formation. I name the former hanmuneo (漢文語), the latter gukjo’eo (國造語). It has been argued by some researchers that their word- formational difference conditions pronunciation. This study is also based on the hypothesis that the fortition in byeong is conditioned by the word-formational difference of words. Standard Korean Language Dictionary (1999/2008) has 556 standard words ending in Chinese character byeong (病), among which 164 words have initial /p/ in the last syllable, 392 words initial /p’/. But in real Korean 113 words have initial /p/ in the last syllable, 443 words initial /p’/. 102 words out of 113 above are hanmuneo so that fortition does not apply to them. 391 words out of 443 above are gukjo’eo so that fortition does apply to them. The pronunciation of yeorbyeong (熱病) should not be /jʌrpjʌŋ/ as in Korean dictionaries but /jʌrp’jʌŋ/, which is real pronunciation in Present-day Korean. The sino-Korean word yeorbyeong is a gukjo’eo and the pronunciation /jʌrp’jʌŋ/ can be explained normally in terms of fortition.