Effects of Sound Change on the Weighting of Acoustic Cues to the Three-Way Laryngeal Stop Contrast in Korean: Diachronic and Dialectal Comparisons

Abstract

Both segmental and suprasegmental properties of the South Kyungsang dialect of Korean have changed under the influence of standard Seoul Korean. This study examines how such sound change affects acoustic cues to the three-way laryngeal contrast among Korean stops across Kyungsang generations through a comparison with Seoul Korean. Thirty-nine female Korean speakers differing in dialect (Kyungsang, Seoul) and age (older, younger) produced words varying in initial stops and lexical accent patterns, for which voice onset time and fundamental frequency (F0) at vowel onset were measured. This study first confirms previous findings regarding age and dialectal variation in distinguishing the three Korean stops. In addition, we report age variation in the use of voice onset time and F0 for the stops in Kyungsang Korean, with younger speakers using F0 more than older speakers as a cue to the stop distinction. This age variation is accounted for by the reduced lexical tonal properties of Kyungsang Korean and the increased influence of Seoul Korean. A comparison of the specific cue weighting across speaker groups also reveals that younger Kyungsang speakers pattern with Seoul speakers who arguably follow the enhancing F0 role of the innovative younger Seoul speakers. The shared cue weighting pattern across generations and dialects suggests that each speaker group changes the acoustic cue weighting in a similar direction.

Keywords

Korean stop production sound change VOT F0 Kyungsang dialect

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Abramson

A. S.

Lisker

(1985). Relative power of cues: F0 shift versus voice timing. In Fromkin

V. A.

(ed.), Phonetic Linguistics: Essays in Honor of Peter Ladefoged. New York, NY: Academic Press.

Arvaniti

Ladd

D. R.

Mennen

(1998). Stability of tonal alignment: The case of Greek prenuclear accents. Journal of Phonetics, 26, 3‒25.

Bang

H.-Y.

Sonderegger

Kang

Clayards

Yoon

T.-J.

(2018). The emergence, progress, and impact of sound change in progress in Seoul Korean: Implications for mechanisms of tonogenesis. Journal of Phonetics, 66, 120–144.

Bates

Maechler

Bolker

Walker

(2013). LME4: Linear mixed-effects models using Eigen and S4. R package version 1.1–7. Available at https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/lme4/index.html.

Benjamin

(1981). Frequency variability in the aged voice. Journal of Gerontology, 36, 722–726.

Bruce

(1977). Swedish Word Accents in Sentence Perspective. Lund, Sweden: Gleerup.

Chang

S.-E.

(2007). The phonetics and phonology of South Kyungsang Korean tones. PhD dissertation, University of Texas, Austin, TX.

Chang

S.-E.

(2008). Tone alternations in South Kyungsang Korean. Paper presented at the 82nd Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA), Chicago, IL.

Chang

S.-E.

(2013). Effects of fundamental frequency and duration variation on the perception of South Kyungsang Korean tones. Language and Speech, 56, 211–228.

10.

Cho

Jun

S.-A.

Ladefoged

(2002). Acoustic and aerodynamic correlates of Korean stops and fricatives. Journal of Phonetics, 30, 198‒228.

11.

Dmitrieva

Llanos

Shultz

A. A.

Francis

A. L.

(2015). Phonological status, not voice onset time, determines the acoustic realization of onset F0 as a secondary voicing cue in Spanish and English. Journal of Phonetics, 49, 77–95.

12.

Escudero

Boersma

(2004). Bridging the gap between L2 speech perception research and phonological theory. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 26, 551–585.

13.

Francis

A. L.

Ciocca

Wong

V. K. M.

Chan

J. K. L.

(2006). Is fundamental frequency a cue to aspiration in initial stops? Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 120, 2884‒2895.

14.

Gandour

(1974). Consonant types and tone in Siamese. Journal of Phonetics, 2, 337‒350.

15.

Han

M. S.

Weitzman

R. S.

(1970). Acoustic features of Korean /P, T, K/, /p, t, k/ and /p^h, t^h, k^h/. Phonetica, 22, 112‒128.

16.

Hombert

J. M.

(1978). Consonant types, vowel quality, and tone. In Fromkin

V. A.

(Ed.), Tone: A Linguistic Survey (pp. 77‒111), New York, NY: Academic Press.

17.

Jun

Kim

Lee

Jun

(2006). The prosodic structure and pitch accent in Northern Kyungsang Korean. Journal of East Asian Linguistics, 15, 289‒317.

18.

Kang

(2014). Voice Onset Time merger and development of tonal contrast in Seoul Korean stops: A corpus study. Journal of Phonetics, 45, 76–90.

19.

Kang

K. H.

Guion

S. G.

(2006). Phonological systems in bilinguals: Age of learning effects on the stop consonant systems of Korean–English bilinguals. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 119, 1672–1683.

20.

Kang

K. H.

Guion

S. G.

(2008). Clear speech production of Korean stops: Changing phonetic targets and enhancement strategies. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 124, 3909‒3917.

21.

Kenstowicz

Park

(2006). Laryngeal features and tone in Kyungsang Korean: A phonetic study. Studies in Phonetics, Phonology and Morphology, 12, 247–264.

22.

Kim

C-W.

(1965). On the autonomy of the tensity feature in stop classification. Word, 21, 339‒359.

23.

Kim

Jun

(2009). Prosodic structure and focus prosody in South Kyungsang Korean. Language Research, 45, 43‒66.

24.

Kim

M.-R.

Beddor

P. S.

Horrocks

(2002). The contribution of consonantal and vocalic information to the perception of Korean initial stops. Journal of Phonetics, 30, 77‒100.

25.

Kim

M.-R.

Duanmu

(2004). “Tense” and “lax” stops in Korean. Journal of East Asian Linguistics, 13, 59‒104.

26.

Kong

Beckman

M. E.

Edwards

(2011). Why are Korean tense stops acquired so early: The role of acoustic properties. Journal of Phonetics, 39, 196–211.

27.

Kuznetsova

Brockhoff

P. B.

Christensen

R. H. B.

(2015). lmerTest: Tests in Linear Mixed Effects models. Retrieved from http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=lmerTest.

28.

Lee

H.-S.

(2008). Pitch accent and its interaction with intonation: Experimental studies of North Kyeongsang Korean. PhD dissertation, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.

29.

Lee

(2016a). Consistent sound change between stops and affricates in Seoul Korean within and across individuals: A diachronic investigation. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 140, EL491–EL496.

30.

Lee

(2016b). Parallel sound change between segmental and suprasegmental properties. Journal of the Korean Society of Speech Science, 8, 23–29.

31.

Lee

Davis

(2009). On the pitch-accent system of South Kyungsang Korean: A phonological perspective. Language Research, 45, 3‒22.

32.

Lee

Jongman

(2012). Effects of tone on the three-way laryngeal distinction in Korean: An acoustic and aerodynamic comparison of the Seoul and South Kyungsang dialects. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 42, 145‒169.

33.

Lee

Jongman

(2015). Acoustic evidence for diachronic sound change in Korean prosody: A comparative study of the Seoul and South Kyungsang dialects. Journal of Phonetics, 50, 15–33.

34.

Lee

Jongman

(2016). A diachronic investigation of the vowels and fricatives in Korean: An acoustic comparison of the Seoul and South Kyungsang dialects. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 46, 157–184.

35.

Lee

Jongman

Zhang

(2016). Variation and change in the nominal pitch-accent system of South Kyungsang Korean. Phonology, 33, 325–351.

36.

Lee

Politzer-Ahles

Jongman

(2013). Speakers of tonal and non-tonal Korean dialects use different cue weightings in the perception of the three-way laryngeal stop contrast. Journal of Phonetics, 41, 117–132.

37.

Lee

Zhang

(2014). The nominal pitch accent system of South Kyungsang Korean. Journal of East Asian Linguistics, 23, 71‒111.

38.

Lehiste

. (1967). Readings in Acoustic Phonetics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

39.

Lisker

Abramson

A. S.

(1964). Cross-language study of voicing in initial stops: Acoustical measurements. Word, 20, 384‒422.

40.

Nielsen

(2011). Specificity and abstractness of VOT imitation. Journal of Phonetics, 39, 132–142.

41.

Nittrouer

Burton

(2005). The role of early language experience in the development of speech perception and phonological processing abilities: Evidence from 5-year-olds with histories of otitis media with effusion and low socioeconomic status. Journal of Communication Disorders, 38, 29–63.

42.

Oglesbee

E. N.

(2008). Multidimensional stop categorization in English, Spanish, Korean, Japanese, and Canadian French. Ph.D. Dissertation. Indiana University, Bloomington, IN.

43.

(2011). Effects of speaker gender on voice onset time in Korean stops. Journal of Phonetics, 39, 59–67.

44.

Pearce

(2009). Kera tone and voicing interaction. Lingua, 119, 846–864.

45.

Prieto

van Santen

Hirschberg

(1995). Tonal alignment patterns in Spanish. Journal of Phonetics, 23, 429‒451.

46.

R Core Team (2015). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. Retrieved from http://www.R-project.org/.

47.

Ramsey

S. R.

(1975). Accent and morphology in Korean dialects: A descriptive and historical study. PhD dissertation, Yale University, New Haven, CT.

48.

Repp

B. H.

(1982). Phonetic trading relations and context effects: New experimental evidence for a speech mode of perception. Psychological Bulletin, 92, 81–110.

49.

Schuh

Kim

(2007). South Kyengsang tones and pitch accent. Manuscript, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA.

50.

Silva

D. J.

(2006). Acoustic evidence for the emergence of tonal contrast in contemporary Korean. Phonology, 23, 287‒308.

51.

Venables

W. N.

Ripley

B. D.

(2002) Modern Applied Statistics with S, 4th Ed. Springer, New York.

52.

Weihs

Ligges

Luebke

Raabe

(2005). klaR analyzing German business cycles. In Baier

Decker

Schmidt-Thieme

(eds.). Data Analysis and Decision Support (pp. 335–343). Berlin, Germany: Springer.

53.

(1993). Contextual tonal variation in Mandarin Chinese. PhD dissertation, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT.