Frequency Effects

This study accounts for Korean /n/-epenthesis from a usage-based perspective, by describing the reduced productivity of epenthesis as an analogical change in progress. We found that epenthesis probability rises as whole-word frequency increases, supporting the hypothesis that analogical change begins in lowfrequency words (Bybee 2002). We interpret the findings as support for the idea that frequent forms are stored and retrieved in production directly while rare words may be derived using grammar. The results further support the existence of morphological strata in Korean. We show that the constituents undergoing /n/epenthesis are largely limited to native rather than Sino-Korean morphemes. However, not all native morphemes are able to trigger /n/ epenthesis. We argue that particular native morphemes are associated with, and able to trigger, epenthesis to the extent that they tend to occur in epenthesis-favoring contexts (Bybee 2002, Raymond & Brown 2012).