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Chapter 7 - Vowel Harmony

from Part II - Phonetics and Phonology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 September 2022

Sungdai Cho
Affiliation:
Binghamton University, State University of New York
John Whitman
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
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Summary

Chapter 7 deals with a longstanding controversy from both historical and theoretical linguistic perspectives. The chapter provides a description of Korean vowel harmony beginning with an overview of its historical and theoretical linguistic background. Middle Korean displays relatively rigorous patterns of vowel harmony; contemporary varieties show reduced but still complicated patterns that are confined to certain morphological contexts, as a result of historical changes. The description of Korean vowel harmony in this chapter is divided mainly into two parts: the relatively complete vowel harmony system in Middle Korean, and vowel harmony in contemporary (chiefly Seoul) Korean. The former provides an historical and typological overview of the productive MK patterns, while the latter focuses on the exceptions and variations of the remnant harmony patterns in ideophones and verbal inflections. The remainder of the chapter introduces a number of theoretical approaches, from early generative treatments to more recent Optimality Theoretic analyses.

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Print publication year: 2022

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  • Vowel Harmony
  • Edited by Sungdai Cho, Binghamton University, State University of New York, John Whitman, Cornell University, New York
  • Book: The Cambridge Handbook of Korean Linguistics
  • Online publication: 30 September 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108292351.008
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  • Vowel Harmony
  • Edited by Sungdai Cho, Binghamton University, State University of New York, John Whitman, Cornell University, New York
  • Book: The Cambridge Handbook of Korean Linguistics
  • Online publication: 30 September 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108292351.008
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  • Vowel Harmony
  • Edited by Sungdai Cho, Binghamton University, State University of New York, John Whitman, Cornell University, New York
  • Book: The Cambridge Handbook of Korean Linguistics
  • Online publication: 30 September 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108292351.008
Available formats
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