The Effect of Word Frequency and Borrowing Period on Tone Assignment of English Loanwords

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study investigates generational differences in the tonal realization of English loanwords in North Kyungsang Korean (NK), focusing on how structural and lexical factors jointly shape ongoing prosodic change. Production data were collected from forty NK speakers and the stimuli were grouped by syllable number, lexical frequency, and borrowing period. The results show that younger speakers produce fewer double high accents and more penult and final accents, with the strongest generational divergence observed in quadrisyllabic items. Lexical frequency and borrowing period further modulate these patterns.
Mid-frequency and integrated loanwords exhibit relatively stable tonal realizations across age groups, whereas low frequency and recently borrowed items show substantial reductions in the representative pattern among younger speakers. These findings suggest that tonal change in NK loanwords proceeds in a gradient, lexically conditioned fashion, driven by the interaction of prosodic structure, usage frequency, and diachronic entrenchment.