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From: deb5@ellis.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: Korean: Odd man out?
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Date: Thu, 11 Apr 1996 14:16:30 GMT
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In article <4kig8n$aaf@juliana.sprynet.com>,
R. Jeffrey Grace <rjgrace@pobox.com> wrote:
>In article <4keseh$ecf@clarknet.clark.net>, gusty@clark.net (Harlan Messinger) wrote:
>
>>The alphabet in which a language is rendered is interesting in and of
>>itself, but in relation to the whole of the language, the alphabet is
>>really pretty insignificant.
>
>I think I understand.  The significant factors of a language are still there 
>in Korean, in that it did develop naturally as a spoken language... reagrdless 
>of the creation of the alphabet by scholars?

That's more or less correct.

It would be easier for us to answer your questions if you could be more
specific about what you wanted to know about "how linguists view the lan-
guage."  Like the eight Indian sages, different linguists are viewing
different aspects of Korean.  A phonetician cares about the speech
sounds, a phonologist about the structural relation of these speech
sounds, a lexicographer about the distinctive elements of the lexicon,
a historical linguist about how all these aspects have changed over 
time, a sociolinguist about how social relations are reflected in lan-
guage, and so forth.

Typologically, Korean is SOV.  Genetically, it is either an isolate,
a sister language to Japanese (whose morphsyntax is astoundingly
similar), and/or a member of the Altaic family (whose other branches
are Mongol, Turkic, and Tungusic).


-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
