The Korean Copula and Palatalization

Abstract

The Korean palatalization of dental stops has been claimed by Ahn (1985) to be lexical in the model of Lexical Phonology insofar as it applies only between word boundaries and it obeys strict cyclicity. However, it turns out that palatalization also applies before the copula /i/. Assuming that the palatalization rule is a word internal sandhi rule applying only within the domain of the phonological word, the copula /i/ should be considered an affix to condition the lexical palatalization rule. This paper discusses the morphological status of the copula and provides substantial evidence for treating it as a clitic as opposed to an affix or an independent word on the basis of tests developed by Zwicky and Pullum (1983) and Zwicky (1985). It also discusses other rules referring to the phonological word as their domain and defines the phonological word in Korean as a morphological word plus either clitics or affixes.