• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.50
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• pp.425-451
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• 2018

In this paper, we examined the issues of the discussions on the subject of doublets. In general, as a definition, the use of doublets refer to a pair of words which have a common etymon, but also to a pair of words or grammatical morphemes that have the same meaning and similar forms of the word. In this paper, we have seen that a typical pairing word is a pair of words with a common etymology. Generally speaking, it is possible to divide doublets into subtypes depending on the identified similarities or differences in the meaning or form. The most distant type from the typical type of doublets is a pair of words that do not have a common etymon, but have the same meaning and are similar in form. The second issue about doublets is whether doublets include only words. For example, if some josas (postpositions or particles) have a common etymon, then it is noted that they can be accepted as a kind of doublets. In the case of suffixes, it may be possible to recognize the suffixes as doublets if they have a common etymon. In other words, it is not necessary to recognize the suffixes as doublets because the derivatives which are derived by the suffixes can be accepted as doublets. In the case of endings, it may be possible to recognize a pair of endings which have the same meaning and the common etymon as a doublet. Otherwise, the word forms to which the endings are combined can be accepted likewise as doublets. However, considering the fact that the endings typically in use in the Korean language may have syntactic properties, the endings should be considered as doublets rather than the words which have the endings. Finally, we conclude that there may be some debate as to whether stem doublets or ending doublets belong to a lexical item in the lexicon. It can be said that they are plural underlying forms and may be deserving of further research.