Re: Mutations in General

On Thursday, October 24, 2002, at 01:41 , Andreas Johansson wrote:

>>>>> [someone, can't remember whom]
>>> This "reinforced" vs "lax" contrast sounds alot like a fortis vs lenis
>>> distinction, does it not?
>>>
[YHL]
>> I just looked up the terms today.  Yes, it does.  I'm at a loss as to why
>> it isn't described that way in the literature.
>
[Andreas]
> Scholarly tradition among koreanists, I'd guess. Idiosyncratic terms used
> to
> describe a particular language aren't that rare. Might the terms
> "reinforced" and "lax" be more or less direct translations of the Korean
> terms?
[YHL]
Oh, good thought.  _The Korean Language_, Iksop Lee & S. Robert Ramsey:

Apparently the doubled-consonants in writing originally represented
"'congealed' [Chinese character here] sounds...used presciptively in the
early texts, to transcribe what were thought of as the proper
pronunciations of Chinese characters.  It was only much later, in this
century, that the letters were used consistently to represent what are now
referred to as the 'hard sounds' (ttwensori), the reinforced or tense
consonants of modern Korean."

At least, ttwensori is a term any Korean would know.  I'd tend to
translate ttwen as "doubled" or "reinforced," but that may be personal
habit.

Yoon Ha Lee [requiescat@cityofveils.com]
http://pegasus.cityofveils.com

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