The written form of a language has been recognized a subsidiary to its spoken form. However, there are many discrepancies between the two forms of a language. This can confuse L2 learners of Korean in reading Korean. The purpose of this study was to investigate the phonological hierarchies corresponding to morphological hierarchies in the modern Korean. The findings of this study were as follows. (1) Utterances are identical with sentences which have the intonation. (2) An intonational phrase consists of one accentual phrase or more. This shows the speaker’s attitudes and emotions. (3) Accentual phrase consists of one phonological word or more. This influences the phonological phenomena and interpretation of the phrase. (4) A phonological word is made up of one morpheme or more. This is marked by potential pause, divisibility, and indivisibility. (4) A speech syllable is composed of phonemes. (5) A phoneme is the smallest unit of spoken language. Although this study did not fully explain the differences between written and spoken language, this study probably helps L2 learners of Korean to read Korean effectively.
1. Introduction
2. Phonological Hierarchies
3. Conclusion