A Study of Lexical Diffusion in Korean

Abstract

To sum up the result of this Quantitative investigation to the Neogrammarian controversy in a study of lexical diffusion in Korean, we could point out two findings. The first is that as we will see in section 2, lexical items change not to a single reflex but often to a group of diverse reflexes. Language change often include stages of variants of different Quantity appearing gradually and unifying into one final form. Such would be what we would like to describe in lexical diffusion. The second is that as we can see in examples in section 2, the orthography in many cases are hypercorrections imitating earlier forms, which therefore is often removed from actual pronunciation. This is especially common in section 3 where we have seen that the orthography in the variants that have been classified as being counter to the rule is so detached from the actual pronunciation that it is difficult to capture the main current of the change. But such phenomena should not be regarded as being in conflict with the theory of change by lexical diffusion. The· reason is that the theory of lexical diffusion was proposed to mend the contradiction in the Neogrammarian thesis that change occurs abruptly without exception. Data with such counter-examples are therefore more appropriate for testing the theory.