ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book proposes an account of prosodic structure above the word level in Korean, a structure that is based on the intonational pattern of an utterance. It argues that tonally defined prosodic structure can better predict and account for the domain of segmental phonological rules. The book explains the variability of the domain due to non-syntactic factors. It describes the intonational structure of two dialects, Seoul and Chonnam and defines two prosodic constituents based on the tonal pattern: the Intonational Phrase and the Accentual Phrase. It also shows that the Intonational phrase also serves as the domain of the segmental phonological rules of Obstruent Nasalization, Spirantization and /s/-palatalization. The book discusses many non-syntactic and non-linguistic factors affecting the Accentual phrasings, factors such as focus and speech rate. It proposes a syntactic constraint on the phrasing.
