In Korean, the phonological phenomena occurs through concatenating morphemes. There are two types of phonological phenomena: phonological alternations and morpho-phonological alternations. Morpho-phonological alternations need both phonological condit...
In Korean, the phonological phenomena occurs through concatenating morphemes. There are two types of phonological phenomena: phonological alternations and morpho-phonological alternations. Morpho-phonological alternations need both phonological conditions and morphological conditions while phonological alternations can be described by only phonological conditions. Most of the morpho-phonological alternations in Korean can be described by phonological conditions and morphological conditions. However morpho-phonological alternations that occur in some conjugated words cannot be described by either phonological conditions or morphological conditions. These types of conjugated words are termed Irregular Verbs. They have been dealt as the exception in traditional grammar.
There are two ways to demonstrate phonological alternation in irregular verbs linguistically. In the first, it is proposed as an operation in phonological component. In the other, as an operation in morphological component. The former is explained through a abstract underlying form of the stem. However it was criticized for abstraction. The latter, as an alternative to abstract underlying form of the stem, proposed that plural underlying forms of stem or conjugated forms are listed in the lexicon.
Here, I propose that irregular verb units are not stored in the lexicon by the stem but in the conjugated form. It is supported by the fact that there are incomplete verbs that use only a few conjugated forms in Korean and that some shortened forms of conjugated words shorten the conjugated form and not the stem. It is also supported by the fact that the conjugated form can be an element in the formation of compound words. I have researched the cognition of native Korean speakers for conjugated forms of irregular verbs. The results show that native speakers do not recognize the stem and inflectional affix apart, but they do recognize conjugated forms.
I shall discuss conjugated forms of irregular verbs and lexicon grounded on usage-based models that emphasize the importance of a speaker's knowledge of language use. The lexicon of usage-based models is a network that consists of a great number of words. The words are formated through inference based on words listed in the lexicon. Here, I have determined Korean speakers build conjugated forms of pseudowords based on actual conjugated forms.
The appearance of variations in the conjugated forms of irregular verbs is related to lexical connection and the frequency of conjugated form use. A smaller difference in the frequency of each conjugated form use showed a stronger lexical connection between conjugated forms, and a stronger lexical connection demonstrated a tendency for more variations to appear.