The Interaction of Prosodic and Syntactic Structures in Causative and Passive Constructions II

The purpose of the paper is to conduct production and perception tests on the homomorphic causative/passive verb constructions in the dialect of the northern Gyeongsang province, to identify the productional and perceptual cues that speakers of the dialect differentiate the two constructions and to reveal the relationship between syntax and phonology (prosody). As a result, through production test, we confirm that speakers of the dialect of the northern Gyeong- sang province use the prosodic information to distinguish between causative and passive constructions that are indistinguishable syntactically. This could be identified by the phenomenon that the frequency value of the ‘root’ of a causative verb is produced higher than that of a passive verb, and that the maximum frequency value of the ‘affix’ of a passive verb is observed higher than that of a causative verb. This means that speakers of the dialect of the northern Gyeong- sang province ultimately rely on the prosody when they distinguish the difference between two syntactically indistinguishable constructions. In the meantime perception test produces slightly different results unlike our expectation in the a few causative verbs, but it generally shows the same results as our anticipation.