헝가리 모음의 음량교체 현상에 대한 연구

A Study on the Vowel Length Alternation in Hungarian

The vowel length opposition is generally regarded as one of the characteristic features in the hungarian vowel system. The vowel length alternation is related to the grammatical role of the vowel length opposition. Since the hungarian roots, in which alternates the vowel length, are conditioned either morphophonologically or lexically, so the studies on the vowel length alternation are discussed on the underlying root form and the morphonological rule at the morphological level (Rice(1970), Vago(1980), Abondolo(1988)). Recently some hungarian scholars have attempted to explain the vowel length alternation in the frame work of CV-based phonology (Nadasy/Siptar(1994), Törkenczy(1994)). However their attempts seem to be inadequate to explain the long vowel shortening and it’s discontinuous division in two syllables. In this paper, I attempt to describe the structural characteistics of the vowel length alternation in Hungarian and try it to reinterprete in terms of prosodic interference between the syllable and the prosodic unit, mora. At first, I discuss the vowel length opposition in the hungarian vowel system, its occurrence restriction, that accounts for the low vowel lengthening. The other form of vowel length alternation, that is, the long vowel shortening, that occurs in some lexically conditioned roots, is described within the structural morphology, in relation to the vowel harmony and the syllabic structure of suffixes. The vowel length alternation, that occurs in two different forms at two different linguistic levels, is based on the same principle, to preserve minimal elements in agglutinate word structure of Hungarian. Thus, the vowel length is to be regarded as a prosodic feature in the vowels, which are participated in their length alternation. The long vowels have two prosodic units, two moras, the short vowels are one moraic. The low vowel lengthening shows that the syllable has no quantitative change, but the more’ s number increases. Reversely, in the vowel shortening phenomenon, the mora does not undergo quantitative change, the syllable’s number increases. vowel lengthening: syllable tier length tier prosodic tier vowel shortening: ð ð (ð =1) CV => CVVC l.l l.l l.l 1 \/ f a f a k fa (I -syllable, I-mora) -> fak (1-syllable, 2-mora) 6 CVVC ð ð eve V C μ μ μ μ ( μ=2) V \ |ny a r ny a r a K nyar (I -syllable, 2-mora) -> nyarak (2-syllable, 2-mora) This prosodic analyse of the vowel length alternations is adequate to explain the optional vowel length alternation in non-altering roots and foreign nominal vocabularies with some derivational suffixes. Finally the foregoing discussions and analyses lead us to conclude that the vowel length alternation in Hungarian extends its linguistic role, from the grammatical role to the wordformational role, applying the prosodic feature of the vowel length to all of the length altering vowels.