국어(國語)의 음운론적(音韻論的) 단어(單語) 재고(再考) = Phonological Word in Korean Revisited

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

In this present study, a) we review how phonological word (‘p-word’) has been defined and used in Korean Linguistics, b) based on which we examine the clear-cut notion of p-word in Korean. We first show that p-word has four major roles in Korean linguistics: a domain to apply phonological rules or constraints, a criterium to judge the boundary of morphological or syntactic words, a bridge to understanding the concept of word that was first developed based on inflecting languages, and a scaffold to the utterance-level phonology. We then suggest that p-word has been used to refer to three different units, some of which are morphological, not phonological, which led to a vicious circle. More specifically, p-word referred to one of the following three units across studies: a) a lexical item and its following postpositions or case markers, b) a lexical item and all following bound forms, c) a phonological unit marked by a physical pause. Based on the above review, we claim that 1) the notion of p-word should be restricted to phonological units and b-2) both connotation and denotation of p-word should be merely phonological. Sequentially, in order to re-define p-word, we examine the notion of pause and eojeol, the key concepts that have been adopted to define p-word in the literature. Finally, we defined p-word in Korean as ‘a unit marked by a physical pause, consisting of (a) phonological lexeme(s)’ in support of the third connotation of p-word: a phonological unit marked by a physical pause. Finally, two remaining connotations were assigned to simple eojeol and compound eojeol, respectively, in consideration of their morphological character.