The Korean Vowel Shift Revisited

Abstract

Many linguists believe that the history of Korean vowel changes, especially those after Middle Korean, have been quite well established. However, until this point, no solid analysis of the posited historical changes of Korean vowels has been made in tenns of phonetic motivations. The main purpose of this study is to provide a phonetic account of the proposed Korean vowel shift in the framework of Natural Phonology. This paper challenges the widely- accepted Korean vowel shift hypothesis, which has been advanced mainly by K. M. Lee and argues that no such vowel shift occurred in the history of the Korean vowel system.