GENGO KENKYU (Journal of the Linguistic Society of Japan)

It has always been taken for granted by Korean and Japanese linguists that all of the surface long vowels in the Kyeongsang dialects of modern Korean consists of two moras, i. e., two vowels. Against this view Rah (1974) and Hayata (1974, 1975) have claimed that the surface long vowels are derived partly from single underlying vowels and partly from two successive underlying vowels. To this analysis has been offered the objection that it is not justifiable to admit two sources of equally long vowels. In this paper the author would like to return to the question, presenting further evidence for the analysis proposed in his previous papers that surface long vowels in the Kyeongsang dialects are of two kinds: long by accent and long by vowel contraction.
Data was mainly obtained from a native speaker of the Yeongcheon dialect in North Kyeongsang-Do. In the notation employed in this paper the segments j and c stand for affricates and the capital letters B, D, G, and J for glottalized segments. Pitch levels will be roughly indicated by the conventional notation, for high, mid, and low pitch respectively.

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In Daegu dialect one can find five types of tone. Two of them-high and non-high-are assigned to syllables with a short vowel ; the other three-rising, falling and low-level-to those with a long vowel.
The investigation into forms consisting of only short syllables shows that the high tone manifests itself in connection either with a single syllable (type b) or with a sequence of more than one (type a) within each relevant syllable chain. By assuming a unit called “mora ” which has a length equivalent to a syllable with a short vowel, accent patterns of these forms can be described as arrangements of morae with high and non-high tones. Using this analysis, accent patterns are distinguished by, (1) the position of the “kernel mora” that is the last mora with a high tone within each relevant word or phrase, (2) the tone of the mora immediately preceding the “ kernel ”(distinction between types a and b), and (3) the number of constituent morae.
The three types of tone in syllables with a long vowel are thus analyzed as different combinations of high and non-high morae in respect totheir length and direction of tone-movement: the rising tone as a sequence of a non-high mora followed by a high mora, the falling tone as a sequence of a high mora followed by a non-high, and the low-level as a sequence of two non-high morae.
Analyzing in this way, the system of accent patterns in Daegu dialect can be described in terms of tone-sequences composed of two distinctive heights within each word or phrase without regard to vowel quantity.

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