This study is a follow-up of Lee (2018) providing a quantitative variationist analysis on the variation of English loanword expressions for ‘smartphone application’ in Korean: ayp, ephul, ayphullikheyisyen, and ephullikheyisyen. Two different data sets including search term frequency ratio from Naver Data Lab and sociolinguistic survey responses from 335 participants regarding the usage of the four loanword variants were examined to identify the usage pattern of the lexical variable. Both search term frequency data and survey responses confirmed that the usage of clipped variants, ayp and ephul, were clearly preferred to their full-formed variants. Logistic regression analyses on the survey data reported that survey takers with higher educational background and more experience in English speaking countries favored using ayp and ayphullikheyisyen. This study argues that Korean speakers with higher education background and more exposure to English favored ay- variants because they considered those variants as more appropriately generated loanwords than evariants.

This research project examines the English loanword adaptation process in Korean as the initiator of variation in the lexical level. By focusing mainly on four loanword variants originated from the English expression application, the current study proposes several linguistic models of initiating lexical variation triggered by loanword adaptation processes. The linguistic examination on the adaptation of application to ayphullikheyisyen and ephullikheyisyen revealed that the generation of both loanword variants were systematically done. Regarding the other two forms, it is strongly suggested that ephul was derived from ephullikheyisyen through clipping, while ayp was a direct adaptation of the clipped English word app. These findings were supported through examining the appearance frequencies of those four variants in written media records. By demonstrating how the loanword adaptation processes can initiate variations in the lexical level, this study provides an additional insight in understanding the basic mechanism of linguistic variation in general, especially in investigating the cause of the initial stage of variation phenomena.