Language Contact And Historical Strata

Language contact includes natural language contact and non-natural language contact. Natural language contact refers to oral contact between different languages (dialects) spoken at the same place. This kind of language contact exists between different dialects, Chinese and minority languages in China. Non-natural language contact occurs with literature speading or translation across different spaces. Sino-Korean is a result of non-natural contact. Historical strata resulted from non-natural language contact, unlike that resulted from natural language contact, leaves much space for further study. This research first distinguishes non-natual language contact from natural language contact, analyses historical strata in Sino-Korean which is formed through literature spreading, discussing characteristics of historical strata resulted from non-natural language contact in the perspective of horizontal transmission.There has been much study on Sino-Korean. However, scholars have not reached consensus on the source dialect of Sino-Korean and the time at which it was spread into Korea. This research believes that the reason for differences of opinions lies on the lack of objective criterion in analyzing historical strata, and the qualitative nature of previous analysis. Based on quantative analysis, this research reexamines sound correspondences between Sino-Korean and Middle Chinese, deciding the historical strata in Sino-Korean with methods used in Chinese dialectology. The source dialect of each stratum in Sino-Korean is another objective of this research.This research defines "stratum" as a set of morpheme forms, or components of morpheme forms, borrowed from other languages/dialects. Differences in morpheme forms resulted from internal historical change are excluded from historical strata. Therefore, once Sino-Korean was formed from borrowing, it cannot split into different strata through internal change, e.g. palatalization. The units of strata analysis are initial, final, and tone. Strata of initials are not necessarily the same with that of finals.In reviewing initials, the major correspondence set and the second major correspondence set are in complementary distribution. Therefore, they belong to a single historical stratum. A few exceptions resulted from similarity in character patterns have been identified and excluded from historical strata analysis. Discussions have been made on sporadic examples supporting multiple layers in Sino-Korean. The study of finals is almost the same as that of initials.Features of Sino-Korean include:1. Sino-Korean has few morphemes with multiple phonological forms, which is different from the situation of Chinese dialects.2. The correspondence between Sino-Korean and Middle Chinese is rather regular with only a few exceptions. The only exceptions are sporadic.3. Exceptions are mainly resulted from misreading. The main reason for misreading is similarity in character patterns.4. Early borrowings before Sino-Korean have totally mixed with inherient Korean lexicons Finally, taking into consideration of the fact that Sino-Korean was initially from a certain ancient Chinese dialect, this research applies the subgrouping method in historical linguistics to the probing of the source of Sino-Korean in order to decide which ancient Chinese dialect is the most similar to Sino-Korean. This research takes statistical approach of subgrouping, selecting43phonological features, and has worked out the tree graph of Sino-Korean and8Middle Chinese Dictionaries. The result shows that the major stratum of Sino-Korean is slightly earlier than Yiqie Jing Yinyi by Huilin.