한자어 어근 ‘童, 匠, 直’의 국어 접미사화 과정

Lexicalization Process of Sino-Korean Roots, ‘Dong(童: a child), Jang(匠: an artisan), and Jik(直: a guard)’

This paper aims to investigate the process of lexicalization in some Sino-Korean roots such as ‘Dong, Jang, and Jik’. Some Sino-Korean roots like ‘Dong, Jang, Jik’ have been used in Korean as if they had Korean origins. However, they originated from Chinese characters. These roots have been playing an important role in Korean word formation. Most data analysed here have been selected from the actual literatures such as Korean Dictionaries and past documents written in Korean. In this paper a synchronic approach and a diachronic approach are used for a more accurate trace of the etymology of the vocabularies under discussion. As a result, it proves that Sino-Korean roots such as ‘Dong, Jang, Jik’ have been changed into suffixes such as ‘-dongi(-동이)/-dungi(-둥이), -jangi(-장이)/-jaengi(-쟁이), -jiki(-지기)’ in modern Korean. The details of this process are as follows; First, most monosyllabic Sino-Korean roots are used only in a bound form in Korean. So, in order to be a free or a used form in a sentence, it needs to be compounded. In most cases, this type of Sino-Korean roots are combined with a suffix and then, they become a free form. Second, the Korean suffix ‘-이(-i)’ is widely used to make a noun, which indicates human beings and things. Thus, by this analogy, it can be said that the suffix ‘-이(-i)’ is attached to the end of some Sino-Korean compounds. By doing so, the hybrid word is euphonically pronounced and morphologically stabilized. Third, the reanalysis of the above hybrid words shows that the morphological boundary of the hybrid words was changed because the combination of a Sino-Korean root and a suffix ‘-이(-i)’ forms another kind of suffixes such as ‘-dongi(-동이)/-dungi(-둥이), -jangi(-장이)/-jaengi(-쟁이), -jiki(-지기)' and so on.’ Lastly, the newly formed suffixes such as ‘-dongi(-동이)/-dungi(-둥이), -jangi(-장이)/-jaengi(-쟁이), -jiki(-지기)' go through the process of semantic generalization to function abstractly. Consequently, these Sino-Korean roots were recognized not as Sino-Korean roots but as original Korean components. As a conclusion, this research indicates that the importance of the Sino-Korean roots as basic materials for coining Korean vocabulary though one cannot recognize its original function now.