2018, Vol., No.56

The Japanese Language Association of Korea 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 1.0

pISSN : 1229-7275
https://journal.kci.go.kr/jlak

This paper aims to analyze the abbreviation patterns of drama titles in Korean and Japanese from a contrastive linguistics perspective. For this purpose, we classified the abbreviation patterns into seven types in Korean and five types in Japanese, and then investigated their frequencies and the number of shortened-form moras and syllables in both languages. The findings of this study are summarized as follows. (i) An acronym combining the initial moras and syllables in the discrete segments of a title turned out to be the most frequent pattern in both languages. (ii) On closer scrutiny, a subtle difference was found. Korean predominantly takes the initial syllable of each segment of a title, whereas Japanese takes two moras from each half of a title, regardless of their position within their respective halves. (iii) Both disyllabic and trisyllabic forms occur with high frequency in Korean, while four-mora forms are overwhelmingly common in Japanese. (iv) Korean abbreviates trisyllabically by eliminating the initial or final segment of a title, while Japanese tends toward quadrimoraic abbreviation with phonological ormorphological changes. (v) A title containing a proper noun tends to be abbreviated down to the proper noun only, regardless of its position in the title in both languages.

This paper discusses the simplified form of the kanji "候" used in literary works mainly transcribed as hentaigana in early modern period of Japan. We used "Heike-monogatari(Kokkai-bon)" for research materials, and also referred to "Ujisyuui-monogatari(Ryuumonbunko-bon)" when necessary. As a result of the analysis, what has been obtained is as follows. (1) The simplified form "候" is not generated only by the constraint of front and back character shapes. (2) The simplified form "候" was prepared as one of the options for not having to repeat the same character. (3) A guarantee ensuring that one can read even when using a simplified form "候" is the fact that the kanji notation of "候" has been rooted throughout the work. (4) The features of the form of the simplified character "候" is that "the character is written with a curve" and "the size of the character is small". These features tell us that the simplified form "候" is used in the character strings of hentaigana. The simplified form "候" is positioned as a "new form of Kanji" generated in the character string of the hentaigana.

This paper analyzes the　asymmetric vowel coalescences pattern and palatalization of Okayama Japanese within the framework of Optimality Theory. The coalescence pattern of Okayama Japanese is similar to that of the Bingo dialect of Hiroshima Prefecture. However, the emergence of a fused vowel like [tja:], [tsa:], [tjo:], [tso:], [dja:] and [djo:] is specific to this dialect. Most Japanese dialect studies tend to describe the phonological characteristics of a target dialect based on Hattori's (1951, 1960, 1979) phonemic system, especially /t/ and /c/. This tendency is shown in the previous studies for Okayama Japanese vowel coalescence. However, Hattori's system presents several problems in terms of distinctiveness and distribution. I will account for the emergence of [tja:], [tsa:], [tjo:], [tso:], [dja:] and [djo:] by assuming input /t/, and by postulating morphologically privileged constraint and OO correspondence constraint, both of which prohibit affrication.