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Chang, C. B. (2009) 'The status of voicing and aspiration as cues to Korean laryngeal contrast.' In: Elliott, Malcolm, Kirby, James, Sawada, O., Staraki, E. and Yoon, S., (eds.), Proceedings from the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society: The Main Session. Chicago, IL: Chicago Linguistic Society, pp. 31-45.

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Abstract

This study reexamines the typologically unusual three-way laryngeal contrast in Korean among ‘lenis’, ‘fortis’, and ‘aspirated’ voiceless plosives in light of a recent proposal by Kim and Duanmu (2004) that the contrast is really among voiced, voiceless unaspirated, and voiceless aspirated categories. The results of a cross-linguistic perception experiment conducted with 24 native Korean speakers are generally consistent with Kim and Duanmu's analysis. The data show that Korean speakers are attuned to voicing in initial position, and this is naturally accounted for by a Korean laryngeal system containing a phonologically voiced category. However, the data also suggest that an important factor in Korean speakers' perception of the ‘lenis’ (~ voiced) plosives word-initially is aspiration. Thus, even if the ‘lenis’ series is analyzed as voiced, it differs in a fundamental way from the phonetic character of other languages' voiced plosives, a finding that severely weakens the cross-linguistic thrust of Kim and Duanmu's argument.

Item Type: Book Chapters
Keywords: Korean, perception, laryngeal contrast, psycholinguistics
SOAS Departments & Centres: Legacy Departments > Faculty of Languages and Cultures > Department of Linguistics
Subjects: P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics
P Language and Literature > PB Modern European Languages
P Language and Literature > PC Romanic languages
P Language and Literature > PE English
P Language and Literature > PI Oriental languages and literatures
P Language and Literature > PK Indo-Iranian languages and literatures
P Language and Literature > PL Languages and literatures of Eastern Asia, Africa, Oceania
ISBN: 9780914203681
Copyright Statement: Copyright 2009 Chicago Linguistic Society. All rights reserved.
Date Deposited: 21 Nov 2014 16:45
URI: https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/id/eprint/19113

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