현대국어 해라체 의문형 어미 ‘-느냐/으냐, -니’의 변화

There are various ways of ending the interrogative forms of contemporary Korean. In the plain style, there is the interrogative ending -nunya, with a verb stem and prefinal ending -ess- or -keyss-. With an adjective, -(u)nya is used. If the adjective ends in a vowel, -nya is attached, but if it ends in a consonant, -unya is attached. By removing nu, the ending -nunya is changed to -nya. This change is an ongoing process, and is not completed in the embedded sentence. In contrast, its loss in the final sentence almost completes the process. Furthermore, the suffix -(u)nya, always in the process of modification, changes to -nya in the final sentence when the adjective ends in a consonant. This process is an analogical leveling. The other interrogative ending -ni in the plain style also takes on the different form of -(u)ni when the adjective ends in a consonant. The alternation of ‘-ni～-uni’ is a result of the analogical extension ending ‘-nya～-unya’.