3 research outputs found
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