Сопоставительно-типологический анализ сегментных и суперсегментных фонетических единиц в русском и корейском языках*

Comparative-typological analysis of segment and suprasegmental phonetic units in the Russian and Korean languages

A growing number of studies in modern linguistic science are dedicated to the typological features of different languages. These studies help to reveal the specific unique features of compared languages. There are different typologies of languages, depending on the features laid in their base. For example, there is a standard classification, which takes into account the ability to attach inflectional and derivational morphemes. According to this classification, there are four types of languages: inflected, agglutinative, polysynthetic and isolating. Russian and Korean languages belong to the inflected (Russian) and agglutinative (Korean) types of language. If we consider languages in terms of prosodic organization of speech, we should divide them into tonal languages, languages with vowel harmony, accent languages with dynamic accent as well as the languages in which the quantitative emphasis is predominant. However, at the same time there are a number of languages whose prosodic structure causes many disputes and Korean language is one of them. In this regard, a comparative analysis of the two phonological systems (Korean and Russian) seems to be important. A comparison of the two systems will help to take a fresh look at the Russian and Korean languages, emphasize their identity and reveal unique features. Our study has showed that universal, typological and unique features can be traced in both languages. Thus, the segmental system in both languages is consonantal but at the same time, the Russian segmental system has characteristic of vocalism. Russian language (one of the Indo- European languages) is, in contrast to Korean (representative of the Altai language family), characterized by the irrelevance of syllables and syllabic division, by incongruous boundaries of syllable and morpheme, by the presence of non-syllabic morpheme etc. In Korean, in turn, as in many languages belonging to the Altaic family, there is the phenomenon of vowel harmony, which is not peculiar to the Russian language. Another specific feature of Russian in comparison with Korean is its accentual type of organization. Polysyllabic words with specific rhythmic patterns, multifunctional accent, accompanied by a regular reduction of unstressed vowels, the interaction of the main and secondary stresses in the word and text and other characteristics also can be treated as specific features of Russian. Comparison and identification of universal and specific characteristics in the languages are of great importance for linguistics in general and for the issues of applied nature. For example, the identification of specific features is important for successful language learning, as it may allow the learners to overcome the problem of phonological sieve , mentioned by N. Troubetzkoy, when the target language is perceived through the prism of the native language and phonetic hearing is insensitive to the characteristics of the target language. It seems to be of great importance especially for the study and teaching of the Russian and Korean languages.