This thesis aims to study the processes of formal change for verbs, identify the motivations and mechanisms impelling such changes, and finally describe the resulting change in the conjugation system. This thesis takes conjugated forms as the basic un...
This thesis aims to study the processes of formal change for verbs, identify the motivations and mechanisms impelling such changes, and finally describe the resulting change in the conjugation system. This thesis takes conjugated forms as the basic unit of research linguistic change in contrast to current studies, which take basic forms as the basic unit within a synchronic perspective. This thesis’ perspective facilitates scrutiny of the processes and motivations driving verbal paradigm change in the historical development of the Korean language.
This thesis commences with a general survey on paradigm change of all 15th Century Korean verbs until their present-day forms and summarizes the subgroups of the conjugation system, their coverage, and their changes. On the basis of this information, the history of the Korean language that the thesis investigates are divided into four historical periods: (1) the 15th Century, (2) ~ Middle of the 18th Century, (3) ~end of the 19th Century, and (4) ~Present Day. Also the mechanisms inducing such changes are listed and the diverse influences among those mechanisms verified.
Following the survey, the focus of this thesis progresses to discourse on the means by which irregular conjugations emerge or disappear. Several new irregular conjugations surface in the whole script spanning from the 15th century to the present: p irregular 1, t irregular 2, u irregular, əh irregular, ə irregular, lɨ irregular-2 and p irregular 2. As a new irregular conjugation arises while each of the conjugated forms of a paradigm drifts along in time, examining each conjugated form is more effective for understanding the processes and the motivations resulting from such changes.
Previous studies heavily focused on the conjugations of p irregular 1, t irregular 2, and u irregular, which well accord with the conclusions of previous studies that phonological change is responsible for linguistic irregularity. Such irregular forms result from the fact that only some conjugated forms have undergone change. Likewise it is attested that p irregular 2 also has come into being while the phonological change of conjugated forms with the ending part beginning with a vowel (regardless of whether it is an inserted vowel or not) initiated the formal change of the other conjugated forms in which the ending part commences with a consonant.
On the contrary, əh irregular and ə irregular have formed in the process of formal fusion that follows cognitive fusion. The formal fusion occurs more frequently when the conjugation form is an adverbial, or an adnominal. This suggests that the rate of change can differ depending on the syntactic function of the conjugated form in question, and that one conjugation of a paradigm, or a few, leads paradigm change and the others follow. The process of emergence of an irregular conjugation, such as lɨ irregular 2 or p irregular 2, indicates that non-phonological motivation, e.g., paradigm convergence or blending, can result in a new irregular conjugation.
In contrast to the emergence of various irregular conjugations, there are just three irregular conjugations that have disappeared since the 15th century: mɨ irregular, zɨ irregular and lɨ irregular (ㄹㅇ). Only mɨ irregular of these disappeared as a result of psychological pressure, which causes paradigmatic leveling. Contemporary Korean is apparently witnessing the disappearance of t irregular 1 and lɨ irregular 1 (ㄹㄹ).
Finally, investigated are the mechanisms by which an irregular conjugation pulls in verbs from another conjugation group, and the process through which an irregular conjugation verb changes into a verb of another conjugation group. The mechanism of the former is an analogical extension. When members of an irregular conjugation group are coherent either formally or semantically and when this characteristic is representative for another group, the former group pulls in low frequency verbs of the same characteristic in the latter group.
The latter case, paradigmatic leveling, is realized by the process in which a new conjugated form is produced on the basis of an existing conjugated form in the paradigm, or by the process that blending or contamination makes conjugated forms similar formally from one another. Paradigmatic leveling based on Consonant･Inserted Vowel ending type, Vowel ending type, and Vowel-Inserted Vowel ending type are attested, but not for all cases of Consonant ending type. Bidirectional change is also attested, especially when the paradigm is rearranged on the basis of a conjugated form of high frequency. Also found is change by reanalysis, or by dialect borrowing.
In this manner, this thesis presents an overview of changes in the conjugation system for all 15th century Korean verbs, and investigates formal changes of irregular conjugations assuming a conjugated form, not the basic form, as the basic unit. It thereby attains the three goals stipulated in this thesis: (1) reveal the processes of formal change for verbs, (2) elucidate its motivations and mechanisms, and (3) describe the resultant change of the conjugation system. When there is a formal change in a verb, the motivation is primarily phonological. However, other motivations are present, such as reanalysis, blending, contamination, analogical extension, paradigm convergence, avoidance of homonymous clash, dialect borrowing etc. Changes based on non-phonological motivations are heavily affected by language use; it is hard to say that there exists any strong tendency to maintain the intra-linguistic order or system.
In addition, it is verified that formal change of a verb is undertaken based on conjugated forms used in real linguistic actions, including online conversations, and that change in a conjugated form leads others to follow it. Further, it suggests that not only derivatives and compounds but also quite a few regularly conjugated forms could be registered in the mental lexicon synchronically.
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