If I could have any research grant I would conduct a linguistic study on the shortening of words 줄임말 since it is a linguistic topic that is very interesting to me. I would want to study specifically why 줄임말 words are created, who would easily recognize them, and what do they signify for the "society" as a whole. I would start by running a study and having native Korean speakers ranging from various generations and currently residing countries. It would be a simple recognition test for each word or phrase and then asking the subject if they did not know to explain what they think it means. The test would have them explain what they think the word means, how they would use it in a sentence, and how popular do they think this word is. It would be a very interesting study since some words way just be the first consonants, it would go further and try to uncover what a morpheme is, what "words: truly are, and the importance of lexicons across cultures. As well as looking into the syntactical significance and how these "new words" would be used in a sentence. It would also be interesting to uncover if these phrases remain for only internet usage or cross-over into daily life. Including Korean expects would also allow us to see how language changes and adapts from generation to generation. This study would be very fun to conduct although I don't know what the control group should be, it can reveal a lot of critical questions.
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