The Formal Grapheme <ㅇ> in Middle Korean

초록

Graphemics has attracted little attention as an object of main linguistic sphere. From linguistic development, the spoken language is prior to the written language. Hence, the written language has long been a replacement of spoken language and a secondary system of representation. Hence, the studies in the preceding have been very confused with transcription and writing system. Consequently, relatively little research has been carried out on graphemics, especially in Korean. Until now, there is, to my knowledge, no study on the graphemic correlation between the Korean Alphabet and Chinese character. The purpose of this study is to examine the graphemic correlation between two languages. Korean, together with English, is a representative of phonemic grapheme. However, the correspondence between grapheme and phoneme is ideally one-to-one, but we could seldom see the perfect one-to-one correspondence. This is caused by the systematic difference between grapheme and phoneme. In addition, Chinese character is a representative of logographic grapheme, which is to say, morphemic grapheme. Both languages have a common characteristic of making-up character. The main characteristic of the Korean writing system is that except for a few grammatical morphemes in archaic texts, no letter may stand alone to represent the elements of Korean language. Like the Chinese character, the Korean letters are combined into blocks. These blocks have been used a syllable as a meaning of character. But the syllable was not coincident with character. One of the structural differences is caused by the grapheme <ㅇ> in middle Korean. This study presents the graphemic function of <ㅇ> in middle Korean by comparing it with Chinese graphemics suggested by Park(2006). He classified the Chinese graphemes into constructional and functional grapheme. And then, he subdivided constructional graphemes into four; stroke, foundation, derivative and formal grapheme. In terms of Chinese graphemics, the grapheme <ㅇ> in middle Korean is included in formal grapheme. It does not solely function, but when it combines with specific grapheme, it becomes a meaningful unit. That is to say, although this grapheme does not function as a phonetic and semantic indicator, it is very essential to form a character.

키워드