A Study on the 'Geomda' (meaning 'Black') Group of Color Adjectives in the Jeju Dialect

This study aims to analyze the linguistic characteristics of color adjectives in the ‘geomda’ (black) series of the Jeju dialect. For this purpose, lexical items with color-related meanings were comprehensively extracted from the Revised and Enlarged Jeju Dialect Dictionary (2009) and Song Sang-jo’s 20th Century Jeju Language Dictionary (2023), excluding words without direct color roots.Phonologically, the contrast between positive and negative vowels influences the nuance and attitude of the speaker, while the opposition between lax and tense consonants reflects differences in chroma without semantic change.Morphologically, the adjectives are formed through two main structures: ‘color root (root + suffix) reduplication + -hada’ and ‘color root (root + suffix) + -hada’. The former includes suffixes like -(eu)s (s representing the Korean consonant ㅅ, siot), while the latter features diverse suffixes such as -eong/-ang (-ah/-eoh), -(eu)rong/-(eu)rung/-(eu)ruk, and -(eu)seureum, -(eu)surung. The type of suffix contributes to gradations in color intensity.Syntactically, fixed expressions appear in the ‘color adjective # noun’ structure, and the selection of adverbs in the ‘degree adverb # color adjective’ structure varies depending on differences in brightness.This study offers insights into the color expression system of the Jeju dialect and reveals aspects of regional linguistic identity.