This study aims to elucidate the phonological motivation of hiatus- resolving processes in Korean. Traditionally, hiatus-resolving phonological processes such as vowel deletion, glide formation, glide insertion, diphthongization, and vowel coalescence...
This study aims to elucidate the phonological motivation of hiatus- resolving processes in Korean. Traditionally, hiatus-resolving phonological processes such as vowel deletion, glide formation, glide insertion, diphthongization, and vowel coalescence have been analyzed mainly in terms of segmental phonotactics, that is, avoiding vowel sequences. In this paper, however, it is argued that hiatus resolution is a syllable-level phonological
phenomenon, not a segment-level one. All the phonological processes conspiring for hiatus resolution have the same phonological motivation: avoiding the generation of marked syllables that are onsetless. The rationale behind the main assumption of this paper is that phonological analysis must be based on the relevant phonological unit.