Nam, Ki-hyun. 2015. Noun-verb pairs in Korean Sign Language. Language Information. Volume 20. 43-74. This paper aims to investigate morphological characteristics distinguishing nouns and verbs in the noun-verb pairs that are semantically and morphologically related. The number of words analyzed in this paper are 561 nouns and 434 verbs. The criteria that distinguish the nouns and verbs were: 1) number of movements, 2) the existence or nonexistence of mouthing, 3) distribution. For movements verbs are produced as single movement and slow movement. The findings of verbs are consistent with those of previous studies. Also, Nouns were produced as single movement and totalling at high frequency. The nouns differed in that for other sign languages, nouns were produced with repetition movement. The mouthings accompanied the production of 50% of the nouns, and 12% of the verbs. The nouns had mouthings much more often rather than the verbs. The distribution became an important criterion when the mouthing was not accompanied or when it was difficult to discriminate between nouns and verbs just depending on the number of movements. With the nouns, the distribution was the second criterion, with the first criterion being the mouthing. With the verbs, the distribution was the second criterion following the number of movements. Finally, we suggest the duration of movement of verbs is related to the aspectual meaning of the verbs.
Key words: 한국수화(Korean Sign Language), 명사-동사 구별(noun-verb distinction), 품사(part of speech)