Permalink : http://hdl.handle.net/2115/48758

The Daegu dialect in Modern Korean has a pitch accent system 1. In this dialect, all accent patterns can be predicted by the presence or absence of an accent kernel as well as its position. In Middle Korean texts, although the tone of each syllable is marked, only the low-beginning pitch is distinctive. It is a system with a raising kernel that causes the pitch to change on the pitch from low to high. If there are sequences of low pitch, the last one should be distinctive. After the accent kernel the pitch patterns are governed by phrasal prosodic features. This means that the accent patterns of Middle Korean could be predicted by indicating whether the word has an accent kernel and, if it does, where it has the kernel. This paper shows, furthermore, that there is an accentual correspondence between Middle Korean and the Daegu dialect of Modern Korean. What this means is that if we know the accent pattern of a word in the former system,we can predict the accent pattern of the word in the latter system, and vice versa.