Variation Patterns in Chinese Korean: An Analysis through Language Contact Theory

This paper aims to empirically demonstrate the variation patterns observed in Chinese Korean and rationally explain them from the perspective of language contact. Over a long period and for various reasons, the ethnic Koreans who migrated from the Korean Peninsula to China have been influenced by the Han Chinese, the majority ethnic group in China, in numerous aspects, including economy, society, culture, and language, due to the policies of the Chinese government. In the multi-ethnic and multilingual society of China, language contact is a common phenomenon. Consequently, Chinese Korean inevitably exhibits elements of the Chinese language in addition to its original Korean linguistic features. Previous research has primarily focused on the diachronic perspective, addressing the characteristics of Korean vocabulary altered under the influence of Chinese. This paper, however, aims to directly observe the variation patterns resulting from language contact with Chinese from a synchronic perspective. For this purpose, Korean compositions written by adolescents in Korean ethnic communities were collected and comprehensively examined. The analysis revealed a significant presence of hybrid words combining Korean derivational suffixes or endings with Chinese morphemes, despite the typological and genealogical differences between Korean and Chinese. Additionally, certain sentence structures showed the influence of Chinese. Based on these findings, it was concluded that the intensity of contact between Korean and Chinese corresponds to level three according to Thomason (2001).