An Overview of Issues in the Vowel System and Vowel Harmony of Korean : Disharmony among the Hypotheses of Vowel Harmony

Abstract

The vowel system is the preliminary basis for the study of vowel harmony (henceforth, VH) in a certain language. Therefore, to discuss VH in Korean it is worthwhile to review vowel systems at several stages of the Korean language, beginning with the simple vowel system of Late Middle Korean (henceforth, LMK) from the fifteenth to the sixteenth century. The establishment of a vowel system for LMK is a rather controversial topic amongst phonologists. In fact, there are principally five different systems suggested by more than a dozen scholars, including two Japanese phonologists.