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Truncation in message-oriented phonology: a case study using Korean vocative truncation

  • Shigeto Kawahara EMAIL logo and Seunghun J. Lee
Published/Copyright: September 26, 2018

Abstract

This paper analyzes the vocative truncation pattern in Korean from the viewpoint of Message-Oriented Phonology (MOP), which capitalizes on the idea that sound patterns are governed by a principle that makes message transfer effective. In the traditional naming pattern, Korean first names consist of a generation marker and a unique portion, and the order between these two elements alternates between generations. To derive vocative forms, the generation marker is truncated, and the suffixal [(j)a] is attached to the unique portion. We argue that MOP naturally predicts this type of truncation. As the generation marker is shared by all the members of the same generation, the generation marker is highly predictable and hence does not reduce uncertainty about the intended message. To achieve effective communication, predictable portions are deleted. Our analysis implies that MOP is relevant not only to phonetic implementation patterns, but also to morphophonological patterns. It also provides support for MOP based on data from a non-Indo-European language. Finally, we aim to integrate insights of MOP with a more formal proposal like Optimality Theory, by relating the predictability of a contrast to the ranking of the faithfulness constraint that it protects, following the spirit of the P-map hypothesis.

Award Identifier / Grant number: #15F15715

Award Identifier / Grant number: #26284059

Award Identifier / Grant number: #17K13448

Funding statement: Thanks to the participants at the Japanese/Korean Linguistics 24 and at the predictability symposium at Sydney, especially Jason Shaw, without whom this work would not exist. Also thanks to two anonymous reviewers, Donna Erickson, Beth Hume, Hyun-Kyung Hwang and Helen Stickney for comments on previous versions of this paper. This work is supported by JSPS, Funder Id: 10.13039/501100001691, grants #15F15715, #26284059 and #17K13448 to the first author and by the Laboratory Program for Korean Studies (AKS-2016-LAB-225004) to the second author.

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Received: 2017-04-26
Accepted: 2017-08-18
Published Online: 2018-09-26

©2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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