An Acoustic Analysis of the Aspiration Merger in Korean

In Korean, 'Aspiration Merger' is the result of the heteromorphemic sequence of lenis stop and /h/ becoming a single aspirated stop word-medially. However, the contrast between lenis stop-plus-/h/ and an underlying aspirated stop is maintained when they span Phonological Phrase boundaries. By varying the position in the prosodic domain such as APP (Across Phonological Phrase) and PPM (Phonological Phrase Medial) positions, the phonetic properties of the two categories are compared. In the results from noise duration and change of intensity, lenis stop-plus-/h/ show a large difference between the APP and PPM positions. The results from a noise duration comparison show that the two categories are completely neutralized into aspirated stop in the PPM position and the complete neutralization is sensitive to prosodic phrasing.