This study investiages morphological and semantic features of the suffix '-쟁이(jaengi)' in the Jeonbuk dialect (North Jeolla). The suffix, -jangi, is one of the most frequently used affixes both in the Standard Korean and the Jeonbuk dialect. Not much attention has been laid on the uses of ‘- jaengi’ in the Jeonbuk dialect. The current study focuses on the morphological and semantic aspects of the ‘-jaengi’ in the Jeonbuk dialect based on the derivational words including ‘-jaengi.’ In the Jeonbuk dialect, the suffix, ‘-jaengi’ is attached to the following word classes–noun, verb, adjective, and adverb, even to the noun phrase and predicate. The ‘-jaengi’ addes the indicative and emotional meanings to its stem. For the indicative meaning, ‘-jaengi’ delivers the meanings of ‘a person who engages in the particular profession,’ ‘a person with a specific nature,’ or ‘a person who takes a repetitive action.’ It follows personal pronouns and body parts as well. These derivational uses attest that ‘-jaengi’ is productively used in the Jeonbuk area and its meanings are not restricted to humans but can be expanded beyond the human categories.
In this discussion, in order to reveal the characteristics of the Jeonbuk dialect ‘-jaengi’ derivative, the ‘-jaengi’ derivative was primarily extracted from the Jeonbuk dialect data. And these derivatives were examined in terms of form and meaning.
In the Jeonbuk dialect, the suffix ‘-jaengi’ is combined with various fishing groups such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives to form derivatives, and due to the high productivity of ‘-jaengi’, it can be seen that ‘-jaengi’ is also combined with the use of noun phrases. In addition, the meaning of the suffix '-쟁이' could be largely divided into cases where the meaning of a person is added, the negative emotions of the speaker are added, and other cases. In the case of adding a person's meaning, it was confirmed that it functions as a conjunction with various meanings, such as “person who does such things professionally,” “person who does such things repeatedly,” depending on the nature of the violation. It has already been combined with personal nouns that have human meaning and nouns that mean part of the body or location to add meaning to the subordinate. This seems to have expanded to other areas, not just humans, as the suffix ‘-jaengi’ was actively used in this area.