A lexicological study on dalla, dao

 

 

A lexicological study on dalla, dao

 

Bae Juchae

 

 

「‘달라, 다오’의 어휘론」 『국어학』56, 국어학회, 2009. 12. 30. (pp.191-220)

Journal of Korean Linguistics 56, December 2009, The Society of Korean Linguistics.

 

 

    Conjugational forms dalla (달라) and dao (다오) have been considered word-forms of a lexeme dalda (달다) ‘to give me/us’, but they should be treated as word-forms of a lexeme juda (주다) ‘to give’.  From a morphological point of view, a morpheme {ju-} has three allomorphs /ju-/, /dal-/, /da-/, of which /dal-/, /da-/ are suppletive forms.  From a lexicological point of view, lexemes «ju-» ‘to give’, «bwaju-» ‘to tolerate’, «al'aju-» ‘to appreciate’ have /dal-/, /da-/; /bwadal-/, /bwada-/; /aladal-/, /alada-/ repectively.  These alternations are both morphologically and semantically conditioned.  on the contrary lexemes «jug’yeoju-» ‘to be cool, great’, «kkeutnaeju-» ‘to be gorgeous’ have regular paradigms.

    Major Korean dictionaries list dalda as a headword, giving a definition of it with example sentences, which means they regard dalda as a lexeme.  However they neither divide it into sememes along with juda nor mention the gaps in the paradigm of juda that could be supplied by dalla, dao.  This lack of consistency in dealing with dalda and juda comes from lexicological ignorance of dalla, dao. dalda cannot be a headword because it is not a lexeme.  The entry of juda should include dalla and dao as its conjugational forms and give enough examples with dalla and dao.  Compound verbs such as bwaju- should also be described as having suppletive forms like bwadal-, bwada-.