Consonantal and Vocalic Effects in Korean Stop Identification

This study investigates the contribution of vocalic information following the release of an initial stop to the identification of the three-way stop contrast (aspirated, lax, and tense) in Korean. Recent studies showed that there is a strong interaction between consonant types and tone. The findings raise questions concerning Korean listeners' use of tonal (or vocalic F0) variation in differentiation initial tense, lax, and aspirated stops. The above issues are addressed in the present study using a cross-splicing methodology. The overall results show that low vocalic F0 provided the most salient information for lax stops; tense and aspirated stop identification depended on a combination of VOT, F0, and H1-H2 characteristics. The perceptual dominance of F0 over VOT for lax stops is consistent with the size of the F0 difference in utterance-initial position, as well as their prominent role in Korean intonational phonology.