Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2009
The problem concerning the phonetic value of the Middle Korean (MK) Grapheme Δ is one of the most troublesome in the study of Korean historical phonology. There are several hypotheses about the phonetic value of this grapheme, its phonemic status, and origin.
The most widespread and more or less generally accepted theory proposes that MK Δ was a voiced fricative [z] which appeared as the result of the lenition of phoneme /s/ in the intervocalic and post-sonorant positions, since Δ is found in these positions in the overwhelming majority of cases (Yi Kimun 1987, 30) and (Ramsey, 1978: 33). Thus, this point of view denies the phonemic status of Δ, representing it as an allophone of /s/.
To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.