earticle

영어

Nominal compounds of ‘N1 + N2’ in Korean can be classified into the following three major categories: co-compound, sub-compound, and fusion. Among these three major categories, insertion of /t/ in the compounding process and subsequent tensification are found only in sub-compounds. This peculiar phenomenon of /t/-insertion which causes, in turn, tensification in sub-compounds has been long controversial because linguists have not been able to expect in which phonological environment of sub-compounding insertion of /t/ takes place. In this paper, I explore a phonological rule which makes it possible to expect the phonological environments of sub-compounding that allow insertion of /t/ and automatic tensification of the subsequent consonant in the onset of N2. In this process, I show that semantic feature(s) between two combined roots should be considered as one of the important structural descriptions in phonology.