VOT merger and f0 contrast in Heritage Korean in California

Recordings of read speech in Korean and English were made by native South Koreans and Korean Americans of varying generational status ( second-generation American-born or 1.5-generation foreign-born) and analyzed for differences in usage of VOT and fundamental frequency to contrast production of Korean lenis and aspirated stops and affricates. Results show that second-generation Korean speakers, especially females, are not showing the collapse of VOT contrast found in the other two groups, which is part of a sound change nearing completion in Seoul. Female second-generation speakers are also not using f0 to differentiate between the stops to the extent that first- and 1.5-generation speakers are. It is concluded that second generation Korean Americans are not participating in the sound change that their same-age peers in Seoul are, and that second generation and 1.5 generation Korean Americans do not pattern together phonologically as a heritage speaker category. The analysis makes a stronger case for applying new models of language acquisition, speech production, and identity formation to heritage language speakers that differ from those used for bilingual speakers

Acoustic characteristics of stop consonants in normal elderly

Changes in speech production in normal elderly might be subtle and gradual. Therefore, an acoustic analysis is appropriate to identify the effect of aging on speech. For this purpose, this study examined four speech parameters; voice onset time (VOT), VOT range, f0 of following vowel(f0FV), and f0FV difference in two age groups, old (mean age 74.57 yrs.) and young (m: 27.43 yrs.). The results show that compared to the older group the younger demonstrated significantly shorter VOTs in lenis and longer in aspirated stop. VOT ranges were relatively broad and consequently overlapped between the phonation types (e.g., lenis, fortis, aspirated). The f0FV values in the older group which are an integral parameter with VOT were lower compared with the young group. The f0FV differences in the old female group were significantly narrower than the young female group, therefore, clear distinction became difficult. In conclusion, contrast in temporal information was obscured, and the domain of glottal information was diminished on stop consonants in Korean elderly. The findings suggest that central/peripheral changes by aging could lead to a deficit in coordination between phonation and articulation.ope

The Effect of Explicit Instruction on the Perception of Spanish Stops by Speakers of Korean

Many studies have been conducted on the influence of explicit phonetic instruction on speech perception and production of English as a second (L2) and foreign (FL) language (e.g. Bradlow, Pisoni, Akahane-Yamada & Tohkura, 1997; Derwing, Munro & Wiebe, 1998), some of which have focused on Spanish as a FL learned by American students whose first or native language (L1) is English (e.g. Elliot, 1997; Lord, 2005). Nonetheless, research has only recently been carried out on third language (L3) perception, with an even greater scarcity of studies that have focused on non-native speakers of English (e.g. Llama, Cardoso & Collins, 2008; Llisterri, & Poch, 1987). As Spanish is the most studied FL in the U.S. and its classrooms often contain non-native English students, it is important to take into account how these individuals’ perception may affect their acquisition of L3 phonology and strive to discover efficient and effective ways of instruction for these linguistic minorities. This study concentrates on Korean L1 speakers and the influence of explicit phonetic instruction on their perception of word-initial consonant stops in Spanish. Consonant stops in both Spanish and English are defined by voicing, differing only somewhat in Voice Onset Time (VOT) (Abramson & Lisker, 1973). In Korean, however, consonant stops are not defined by voicing, but rather by two features: tenseness and aspiration (Kim, C. W., 1965; Kim, N., 1990). It has been shown that this Korean system greatly influences the perception of systems whose elements are distinguished by voicing (Kang, Kyoung-Ho & Susan Guion, 2006). The participants in this study were 13 native speakers of Korean studying in the U.S. The experiment tested the effect of explicit instruction on participants’ perception by having participants listen to 36 voice recordings of Spanish syllables and choose the syllable (written in Latin characters) which best represented the one they heard. The experimental group completed a pre-test before receiving instruction in the form of a video, after which they took an immediate post-test, with a delayed post-test the following week. Based on previous research, it was hypothesized that L1 Korean speakers would parse the voiced stops with more accuracy than the voiceless ones, but that explicit phonetic instruction would improve participants’ perception of the latter. The results of the present study support this conclusion

Korean laryngeal contrast revisited:An electroglottographic study on denasalized and oral stops

In several Korean dialects, domain-initial nasal onsets undergo denasalization as a recent sound change. Nasal stops may be realized as prevoiced or even devoiced stops. This makes it necessary to examine the interplay of phonetic properties of the denasalized and the three oral stop series as a whole, in synchrony and diachrony. What are their concomitant and conflicting properties? Our study provides a bigger picture of the laryngeal contrast in Seoul and Gyeonggi Korean by examining the acoustic distributions related to the laryngeal properties of the four stop series, using acoustic and electroglottographic data. VOT and 'f'0 play important roles in the distinction of the four stop series, in line with previous studies. While the contribution of voice quality is relatively minor, we show that it plays an essential role of disambiguation when the VOT–'f'0 space gets crowded: When lenis stops can be confused with other stops, there is an enhancement of breathy voice. Finally, we discuss stop variation according to prosodic contexts. We highlight the basis of both syntagmatic variation and paradigmatic contrast in their phonetic implementations. They illustrate a constant reorganization to reconcile contrast maintenance with constraints from articulatory and perceptual systems, as well as language-specific structures

Speech Perception in “Bubble” Noise: Korean Fricatives and Affricates By Native and Non-native Korean Listeners

The current study examines acoustic cues used by second language learners of Korean to discriminate between Korean fricatives and affricates in noise and how these cues relate to those used by native Korean listeners. Stimuli consist of naturally-spoken consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel (CVCV) syllables: /sɑdɑ/, /s*ɑdɑ/, /tʃɑdɑ/, /tʃhɑdɑ/, and /tʃ*ɑdɑ/. In this experiment, the “bubble noise” methodology of Mandel at al. (2016) was used to identify the time-frequency locations of important cues in each utterance, i.e., where audibility of the location is significantly correlated with correct identification of the utterance in noise. Results show that non-native Korean listeners can discriminate between Korean fricatives and affricates in noise after training with the specific utterances. However, the acoustic cues used by L2 Korean listeners are different from those used by native Korean listeners. There were explicit differences in the use of the acoustic cues between the two groups for identifying tenseness. The results of this study contribute to a better understanding of how second language learners of Korean process language. Furthermore, the current study helps us to better understand how people learning a second language process speech perception in noisy environments

The production and perception of coronal fricatives in Seoul Korean: The case for a fourth laryngeal category

This article presents new data on the contrast between the two voiceless coronal fricatives of Korean, variously described as a lenis/fortis or aspirated/fortis contrast. In utterance-initial position, the fricatives were found to differ in centroid frequency; duration of frication, aspiration, and the following vowel; and several aspects of the following vowel onset, including intensity profile, spectral tilt, and F1 onset. The between-fricative differences varied across vowel contexts, however, and spectral differences in the vowel onset especially were more pronounced for /a/ than for /i, ɯ, u/. This disparity led to the hypothesis that cues in the following vowel onset would exert a weaker influence on perception for high vowels than for low vowels. Perception data provided general support for this hypothesis, indicating that while vowel onset cues had the largest impact on perception for both high- and low-vowel stimuli, this influence was weaker for high vowels. Perception was also strongly influenced by aspiration duration, with modest contributions from frication duration and f0 onset. Taken together, these findings suggest that the 'non-fortis' fricative is best characterized not in terms of the lenis or aspirated categories for stops, but in terms of a unique representation that is both lenis and aspirated

Correlation between VOT and F0 in the perception of Korean stops and affricates

Thesis (master`s)--서울대학교 대학원 :언어학과 언어학전공,2004.Maste

영어 차용어에서 발생하는 어두 경음화의 음운론적 경향

학위논문 (석사)-- 서울대학교 대학원 : 언어학과, 2017. 2. 전종호.The main purpose of this thesis is to investigate the phonological trends in word-initial tensification of English loanwords in Korean, and to explore the reasons for the trends based on the phonological distribution of native phonology. In general, English voiced stops and affricate are adapted to Korean as voiceless lax stops and affricate, respectively. However, for some English voiced stops and affricate, not only a lax initial form but also its tense counterpart may appear. The majority of the previous accounts have focused on the origin of the tensification in question, rather than on the phonological condition of the tensification. This is likely because the word-initial tensification of English loans is widely regarded as an idiosyncratic process that cannot be characterized by a phonological rule. To date, no previous studies have provided comprehensive explanations on the gradient tendency of the tensification. Based on two different data sources, a judgment test, and newspapers from the 1890s to 1950s, I found that loanword tensification is more likely to occur when the place of articulation of the tensification site is alveopalatal, when the height of the vowel following the tensification site is non-high compared to high, when the word is monosyllabic rather than multisyllabic, and when the phonation type of the onset of the syllable following the tensification site is the tense fricative. I refer to these findings by four phonological conditions as place, height, length, and assimilation effect, respectively. Given that the various patterns shown in loanwords may be influenced by their native phonology, two possible sources were investigated to explore the underlying reason for each effect. The first source was native tensification that shows optional tensification in a similar way to loanwords. If loanword and native tensification both show similar tendency by each effect, it might be possible that the loanword tensification is simply an extension of the active process in native tensification. Second, based on various arguments claiming that the variable patterns found in loanwords from other languages may reflect covert statistical generalizations of their native lexicon (Kubozono, 2006Luke and Lau, 2008Zuraw, 2010among others), it is possible that the tendencies found in loanword tensification may also reflect statistical trends displayed by Korean common nouns with initial tense stop and affricate. To verify these possibilities, I investigated the contextual distribution of word-initial tense stop and affricate in the Korean lexicon. Based on an in-depth examination of the two sources, I found that the phonological trends in loanword tensification partially mirror phonological trends in both native tensification and the Korean lexicon. The place and height effect of the loanword tensification were also confirmed in native tensification. On the other hand, the height, length, and assimilation effect of loanword tensification mirror the extant distribution of Korean common nouns. In addition, I discussed the phonetic background that motivates each contextual factor found in loanword tensification, focusing on the acoustic and articulatory properties of each context. For the height effect of loanword tensification, the relation between the voice onset time (VOT) value of the word-initial stop and the following vowels height was considered. Regarding the assimilation effect, it seems that the effect requires additional articulatory effort which means that it does not have clear phonetic motivation. Rather, the assimilation effect substantially mirrors the salient distribution of the Korean lexicon. In summary, this thesis has scrutinized phonological trends in loanword tensification based on two different datasets. Based on quantitative data, I not only systematically examined the trends, but also found new phonological factors that affect tensification rate. In addition, it is the first to explore the question of what phonological aspects drive the contextual distribution of loanword tensification, which has not been discussed in detail in previous studies. As a result, this study demonstrated that the distribution of loanword tensification reflects that of the native phonology.1. Introduction 1 2. Previous studies 7 2.1. Phonological conditions of loanword tensification 8 2.2. Japanese influence 10 2.3. General sound change in Korean 13 2.4. Phonetic similarity between English and Korean 16 2.5. Summary 18 3. Data 20 3.1. Judgment test 21 3.2. A survey of newspapers from the 1890s to 1950s 33 3.3. Summary 40 4. What drives the trends in loanword tensification 43 4.1. Does native tensification show the same phonological trends 45 4.1.1. Survey 46 4.1.2. Results 48 4.1.3. Summary 54 4.2. Do the trends in loanword tensification reflect the distribution of the Korean lexicon 55 4.2.1. Survey 56 4.2.2. Results 57 4.2.3. Summary 66 5. Phonetic background 68 5.1. The height effect 69 5.2. The assimilation effect 74 6. Conclusion 78 REFERENCES 80 Appendix I 86 Appendix II 94 Korean Abstract 100Maste

The Development Of Glide Deletion In Seoul Korean: A Corpus And Articulatory Study

This dissertation investigates the pathways and causes of the development of glide deletion in Seoul Korean. Seoul provides fertile ground for studies of linguistic innovation in an urban setting since it has seen rapid historical, social and demographic changes in the twentieth century. The phenomenon under investigation is the variable deletion of the labiovelar glide /w/ found to be on the rise in Seoul Korean (Silva, 1991; Kang, 1997). I present two studies addressing variation and change at two different levels: a corpus study tracking the development of /w/-deletion at the phonological level and an articulatory study examining the phonetic aspect of this change. The corpus data are drawn from the sociolinguistic interviews with 48 native Seoul Koreans between 2015 and 2017. A trend comparison with the data from an earlier study of /w/- deletion (Kang, 1997) reveals that /w/-deletion in postconsonantal position has begun to retreat, while non-postconsonantal /w/-deletion has been rising vigorously. More importantly, the effect of preceding segment that used to be the strongest constraint on /w/-deletion has weakened over time. I conclude that /w/-deletion in Seoul Korean is being reanalyzed with the structural details being diluted over time. I analyze this weakening of the original pattern as the result of linguistic diffusion induced by a great influx of migrants into Seoul after the Korean War (1950-1953). In an articulatory study, ultrasound data of tongue movements and video data of lip rounding for the production of /w/ for three native Seoul Koreans in their 20s, 30s and 50s were analyzed using Optical Flow Analysis. I find that /w/ in Seoul Korean is subject to both gradient reduction and categorical deletion and that younger speakers exhibit a significantly larger articulatory gestures for /w/ after a bilabial than older generation, which is consistent with the pattern of phonological change found in the corpus study. This dissertation demonstrates the importance of using both corpus and articulatory data in the investigation of a change, finding the coexistence of gradient and categorical effects in segmental deletion processes. Finally, it advances our understanding of the outcome of migration-induced dialect contact in contemporary urban settings

Cue Primacy and Spontaneous Imitation: Is Imitation Phonetic or Phonological?

Previous research on spontaneous imitation examines how speaker-listeners’ own production changes after hearing a few minutes of model speech, and suggests that speech perception and production are closely related. This dissertation investigates how cue primacy influences imitation by separately manipulating two co-varying cues differing in their primacy for one phonological category. By examining how similarly or differently primary and non- primary cues operate in spontaneous imitation, this dissertation studies the nature of the cognitive representations that are responsible for imitation. In order to examine whether the cognitive representations that are involved in speech imitation are abstract phonological categories or individual phonetic properties, this study tests spontaneous imitation of aspirated stops by Seoul Korean speakers. In Seoul Korean, at least two distinct acoustic properties, stop voice onset time (VOT) and post-stop fundamental frequency (f0), differentiate aspirated stops from stops of different phonation types, with post-stop f0 being the primary cue for aspirated stops. Seoul Korean participants heard and shadowed (i.e., immediately repeated what they heard without being told to imitate) target model speech in which initial aspirated /th/ was enhanced with either extended VOT or raised post-stop f0. Speakers’ realization of these properties in their own /th/, /t/, and /t*/ productions were compared before, during, and after exposure. The results show that enhancements of both primary and non-primary cues trigger imitative changes, and that exposure to an enhanced non-primary cue (long VOT) influences the production not only of that cue but also of the primary cue for aspirated stops (post-stop f0). However, an enhanced primary cue (high f0) does not have similar effects on the non-primary cue. Moreover, the imitative changes are generalized to maximize the relevant phonological contrast, as evidenced by lowering of f0 after lax /t/ and sonorants. These findings suggest that imitation is not strictly tied to individual phonetic properties but it is rather phonological in that abstract categories are involved in the process of imitation. This dissertation provides a new insight on the role of phonology in spontaneous imitation.PhDLinguisticsUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/113364/1/harim_1.pd