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영어

The purpose of this study is to examine a few issues associated with the contraction phenomenon in Korean. In Korean, contraction can be considered to be the phenomenon that two phonemes are combined to be a single phoneme. It is the phenomenon that the number of phonemes is reduced in the process of phonological changes. Of phenomena treated as the contraction in the previous discussion, a phonological phenomenon difficult to be regarded as contraction and phenomenon newly regarded as contraction were reviewed. In some cases, it is not easy to describe the scope of contraction and process of contraction with aspiration, the representative phonological phenomenon of contraction. With regard to the scope of contraction, so called the contraction phenomenon does not belong to the category of contraction in the strict sense. They also included things not easy to be explained only by glide formation or phonological aspects. And of the problems on the process of contraction, when ‘ㅈ’ etc. come in front of ‘ㅎ’ as shown in ‘[ichida]’, it is not easy to explain that it has been aspirated after going through syllable-final plain stops or ‘ㅈ’ and ‘ㅎ’ have been directed contracted. A phonological phenomenon that can be newly regarded as contraction is related to ‘ㆆ’. ‘ㆆ’ can be considered to be a phoneme appropriate to describe the irregular verbs of Korean and be understood in terms of showing the feasibility of phonological skills. According to the utilization aspect shown in ‘Jikko, Jieuni, Jieo’, it is difficult to explain that the utilization aspect of the previous period has been fossilized into modern Korean. Therefore, it is reasonable to recognize ‘ㆆ’ and regard it as the resulting contraction. ‘ㆆ’ can be considered as an element of glottalizing a following ending immediately without being changed or neutralized into ‘ㄷ’. By considering so, there is an advantage that it can be described in parallel with the aspiration phenomenon in which ‘ㅎ’ is shown.