A Phonological Study On North-Western Dialect Of The Korean

This thesis has investigated the phonological changes of North-Western Dialect of the Korean in Liaoning province & Tonghua, Baishan area of Jilin province.According to different age degrees,this thesis sums up the phonological changes of speech sounds in this area.In this dialect,the old people use 8 monophthongs([i],[e],[(?)], [(?)],[(?)],[a],[u],[(?)]).Young people use an additional monophthong phoneme[y].And all of the people pronounced[w(?)]instead of monophthong [φ].In this dialect,there are two glides:[j]and[w],which constitutes 11 diphthongs([ja],[j(?)],[j(?)],[ju],[j(?)],[je],[wa],[w(?)],[w(?)], [we],[wi]).There is an additional diphthong[(?)^i]in children's language.There is a suprasegmental[∶]in the old people.In this dialect,there are 19 consonants([p],[p'],[p'],[k],[k'],[k'], [t],[t'],[t'],[s],[s'],[(?)],[(?)'],[(?)'],[h],[m],[n],[(?)],[(?)]),which are the same with standard Korean language.[(?)],[(?)']and[(?)']remain as alveolar.So,/(?)/,/(?)/,/(?)/ do not become palatalization in the old people.In this dialect,the co-articulation of[i]and[u]results in the pronounce of[·|],[(?)|],[(?)|]etc.in standard Korean language.The first phoneme of Chinese words[(?)]is pronounced[(?)]by old people,but[(?)]and[(?)]are used easily in middle-aged people.Young people and children pronounce it to[(?)].This is influenced by the rules of spelling. In the past,phoneme[g]exists commonly in this area,but intervocalic[b]shows a little,and intervocalic[s]nearly disappears. So intervocalic[b],[s]do not exist in this area.Now,the traditional Korean north-western dialect's characteristics have basically disappeared in this area,but remain a lot in the old people.Most middle-aged people have accepted education in the school,so they use more standard Korean language than the old people.But due to influence from old people,they use dialect more than the younger generation,mixing up dialect with standard Korean Language.Almost all the younger generation use standard Korean language,which is the contribution of the standard education in school.In a word,the standard Korean language is used more and more with the generation becoming younger and younger.The phonemes that resist with standard Korean language are disappearing gradually;the language is becoming regular now.