The Status of Onglides in the Kyongsang Dialect of Korean

Abstract

The status of onglides in the syllable structure differs in languages. In some languages, onglides are part of the syllable onset while in other languages they are considered part of a diphthong. In Standard Korean, there have been controversies over the status of onglides whether they are part of the onset or of the nucleus. In this paper, it is claimed that onglides are part of the syllable nucleus in the Kyongsang dialect of Korean in contrast to previous claims that onglides are part of the syllable onset in this dialect. My argument is based on three pieces of dialect-internal evidence (llJ/-deletion, 1Ir alternation and glide deletion). The glide formation and glide deletion phenomena that occur at a morpheme boundary in KD also support the nucleus view of glides. Along the argument, it will be shown that the glide is represented as being comoraic with the following vowel in underlying representation.