Elsevier

Journal of Phonetics

Volume 30, Issue 1, January 2002, Pages 77-100
Journal of Phonetics

Regular Article
The contribution of consonantal and vocalic information to the perception of Korean initial stops

https://doi.org/10.1006/jpho.2001.0152Get rights and content

Abstract

In word-initial position, Korean voiceless tense, lax, and aspirated stops differ in acoustic properties that fall within the conventional “consonant” portion, as well as properties falling within the “vowel” portion beginning at voicing onset. Experiment 1 investigated the relative importance of these properties to stop identification by testing Korean listeners' perception of cross-spliced stimuli whose initial consonant portion specified one phonation type and whose vowel portion specified another type. Experiment 2 tested whether the voiced vowel portion alone could cue the phonation type of a deleted initial consonant. The results of both experiments showed that vowel portions from syllables with lax onsets were necessary and largely sufficient to cue lax stops. For vowel portions from syllables with aspirated or tense onsets, the role of vocalic information in stop identification depended on the particular combination of cross-spliced portions (Experiment 1); in the absence of any consonant portion (Experiment 2), both tense and aspirated vowel portions were usually heard as having had tense onsets. The perceptual patterns are interpreted in terms of the acoustic properties of the stimuli. Low vocalicf0 provided the most salient information for lax stops; tense and aspirated stop identification depended on a combination of VOT, f0, and H 1−H 2 characteristics. The perceptual dominance off0 over VOT for lax stops is consistent with the size of the f0 differences in word- (and phrase-) initial position, as well as the prominent role of the resulting tonal patterns in Korean intonational phonology.

References (46)

  • A. Agresti

    An introduction to categorical data analysis

    (1996)
  • H. Ahn

    Post-release phonatory processes in English and Korean: acoustic correlates and implications for Korean phonology

    (1999)
  • C. Bickley

    Acoustic analysis and perception of breathy vowels

    Speech Communication Working Papers, MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics

    (1982)
  • T. Cho

    Vowel correlates to consonant phonation: an acoustic-perceptual study of Korean obstruents

    (1996)
  • S.N. Dart

    An aerodynamic study of Korean stop consonants: measurements and modeling

    Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

    (1987)
  • R.L. Diehl et al.

    Effect of fundamental frequency on medial [+voice]/[−voice] judgments

    Phonetica

    (1995)
  • C.-G. Gim

    Jeonnam Bangeone Seongjo (Tone in Jeonnam Korean)

    Hangul

    (1969)
  • J.-I. Han

    The phonetics and phonology of “tense” and “plain” consonants in Korean

    (1996)
  • J.-I. Han

    Perception of Korean tense and lax consonants: evidence for a geminate analysis of tense consonants

  • M.S. Han et al.

    Acoustic features of Korean /P,T,K/,/p,t,k/and/ph,th,kh/

    Phonetica

    (1970)
  • H. Hirose et al.

    Activity of the thyroarytenoid muscle in the production of Korean stops and fricatives

    Annual Bulletin, Research Institute of Logopedics and Phoniatrics, University of Tokyo

    (1983)
  • K. Hong et al.

    Laryngeal adjustments for Korean stops, affricates, and fricatives—an electromyographic study

    Annual Bulletin, Research Institute of Logopedics and Phoniatrics, University of Tokyo

    (1991)
  • Cited by (63)

    • Post-adolescent changes in the perception of regional sub-phonemic variation

      2022, Journal of Phonetics
      Citation Excerpt :

      According to the meta-analysis presented in Beckman, Li, Kong, and Edwards (2014), this sound change is mostly complete for speakers born after 1985. Studies have also demonstrated an analogous shift in the weighting of the VOT and f0 cues in perception (Kang, 2010a; Kim, Beddor, & Horrocks, 2002; Kong, Beckman, & Edwards, 2011; Schertz, Cho, Lotto, & Warner, 2015; Kong & Lee, 2018). The general finding reported by these studies is that while Seoul listeners primarily rely on VOT in identifying fortis vs. non-fortis stops, they use both VOT and f0 in distinguishing lenis from aspirated stops.

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text