This paper has investigated the colloquialization of American English in a best-seller novel Pachinko written in English by a well-recognized Korean-American writer Lee Min Jin. American English has been undergoing a language shift called ‘colloquialization’ for several decades. Written American English has deviated from using the formal, prescriptive, scholarly structures and preferred the use of informal, vernacular, oral speech-like structures, among which is restrictive relative clauses (RCs) (Leech & Smith, 2006, Hinrichs et al., 2015). While the animacy constraint is respected for animate and inanimate head nouns, the that-rule, preferring that over other relative heads such as which or ø, is reportedly observed in general and public writings such as novels. But that was the result from the data collected and reported over 30 years ago. According to the 948 restrictive RC data elicited from the novel Pachinko, it was obvious that the colloquialization of American English has furthered towards more economical RCs as doing away with overt relative heads. Surprisingly, while which was virtually non-existent in the novel, ø was predominantly preferred in all types of RCs (81.5% for object RCs, 70.6% for object RCs of preposition, and 59.2% for adjunct RCs) except for subject RCs where a Head must be overtly present. In that case, who was selected for animate Heads and that was selected for inanimate Heads. Overall, the that-rule was out of fashion, and the ø-rule was applied literally wherever and whenever possible. Contrary to Quirk et al. (1985), despite an intervening phrase between the Head and an RC and despite the complexity of the subject of RCs, ø was preferred. This paper concludes that the colloquialization of American English has rather simplified and systematized the choices of relative heads: maximally use ø if grammatical, maximally avoid which if possible, and respect the animacy constraint if ø can’t be enforced.
본 논문은 한국계 미국인 작가 이민진의 영어 소설 ‘파친코’에 내포된 미국영어의 구어체화(colloquialization)에 대해 고찰했다. 미국영어는 수십 년 동안 '구어체화'라는 언어 변화가 진행되고 있다. 문어체 미국영어는 형식적, 규범적, 학문적 구조의 사용에서 벗어나 비형식적, 모국어, 구두어와 유사한 구조의 사용을 선호하며, 그러한 구어체화 가운데에는 제한적 관계절이 있다(Leech & Smith, 2006, Hinrichs et al., 2015). 소설 ‘파친코’에서 도출된 948개의 제한적 관계절 데이터의 분석 결과 적어도 이 소설에서 미국영어의 구어체화는 발음이 되는 관계대명사는 회피하며, 통사적으로 더 경제적인 관계절 도출을 선호했다. 관계대명사 which는 사실상 소설에서 사용되지 않았고, 관계대명사가 있어야 하는 주격관계절을 제외하면 ø가 모든 유형의 관계절에서 우세하게 선호했다(목적격 81.5%, 전치사의 목적격 70.6%, 부사 59.2%). 전반적으로 which 또는 ø보다는 that을 선호한다는 소위 ‘that-규칙화’는 지지되지 않았고, 오히려 ‘ø-규칙화’가 일반적이었다. 미국영어의 구어체화가 소설 ‘파친코’에서 관계대명사의 선택에 있어서 ø-규칙화가 체계적으로 도입되었다는 결론을 도출했다. 즉, 비문법이 아니라면 ø를 최대한 사용, which는 최대한 회피, ø가 적용이 안 되는 경우에는 유생성 제약을 존중했다.