재미 동포 한국어의 진행 중인 음변화로서의 ‘-느-’ 탈락

초록

This paper investigates the ongoing ‘-nu-’ [nɨ] deletion phenomenon in Korean Americans’ Korean, describing its characteristics and identifying its mechanism and cause. In this variety, ‘-nu-’ deletion predominantly occurs in the adnominal ending ‘-nun’ [nɨn] and the conjunctive ending ‘-nuntey’ [nɨnde]. It is accompanied by compensatory lengthening and can cause ambiguity between past and present tense. This deletion is rapidly spreading at the boundary of immigrant 1st and 1.5-generations, but it is still in the early stages of change. The mechanism of ‘-nu-’ deletion is sound change. Its causes are intralinguistically ‘ease of articulation’ and extralinguistically ‘incomplete acquisition’ of Korean; among these, the latter is the more dominant cause. The phonetic cause of ‘-nu-’ deletion was already present in 1st-generation speakers, but this change could be inhibited due to the function of tense opposition that ‘-nu-’ is responsible for. However, 1.5- and 2nd-generation speakers, due to their incomplete acquisition of such grammatical knowledge, were finally able to develop ‘-nu-’ deletion. This can be viewed as a process in the variety where the means of tense opposition in embedded clauses is shifting from grammatical forms to context.

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