Distributed Morphology Analysis of a Morphologically- Conditioned Tone Shift in North Kyungsang Korean

This paper investigates a tone shift in relation to various morphological processes in North Kyungsang Korean within the framework of Distributed Morphology. A certain class of verbal roots shows a tone shift to the penultimate syllable within a word, but this shift is blocked when resylla- bification occurs. However, there are exceptional cases where tone shifts to the penultimate syllable under certain conditions but is blocked by the presence of the honorific morpheme, even when resyllabification does not occur. This paper proposes that the honorific feature restricts the tone shift to the verbal phrase and accounts for the realization of Double High accent when the honorific morpheme is attached. This work underscores the need for further investigation into the interactions between morphological features and tone assignment in North Kyungsang Korean within the Distributed Morphology framework.