Studies of word-level meaning-sound systematicity in English and four other European languages have shown that words that sound similar tend to have similar meanings. The term ‘systematicity’ in this research tradition is defined as statistically non-arbitrary relations between sub-domains of language, in contrast to the traditionally assumed Saussurian arbitrariness. We explore such systematicity in a typologically distinct language, Korean. We find a relatively high level of systematicity, which we attribute to the method of analysis where we applied Latent Semantic Analysis based on eo-jeols—sequences of syllable-blocks bounded by spaces in an internet corpus of written Korean. Eo-jeols embody a psychologically realistic spectrum of linguistic structure and influence, compared with previous purely lexically based studies of systematicity. Systematicity was pervasive in our sample of the Korean lexicon—partitioned by word frequency, etymological origin, syllabic constituents (onset, vowel, coda, rhyme), syntactic categories, homonyms, onomatopoeia, and loanwords—suggesting a fundamental basis for systematicity. We explain meaning-sound systematicity in terms of related degrees of cognitive effort in speaking and listening.

对英语和其他四种欧洲语言的词级意义-声音系统性的研究表明，听起来相似的词往往具有相似的含义。在这一研究传统中，术语“系统性”被定义为语言子域之间的统计上非任意关系，与传统上假定的索绪尔任意性形成对比。我们用一种类型不同的语言——韩语来探索这种系统性。我们发现了相对较高的系统性，我们将其归因于我们应用基于eo-jeols的潜在语义分析的分析方法——互联网书面韩语语料库中以空格为界的音节块序列。与以前纯粹基于词汇的系统性研究相比，Eo-jeols 体现了语言结构和影响的心理现实谱。系统性在我们的韩语词典样本中普遍存在——按词频、词源、音节成分（起始、元音、尾声、押韵）、句法类别、同音异义词、拟声词和借词划分——这表明系统性的基本基础。我们根据口语和听力中认知努力的相关程度来解释意义-声音系统性。