DOI QR코드

DOI QR Code

A study of the preconsonantal vowel shortening in Chinese

  • 투고 : 2018.10.30
  • 심사 : 2018.11.30
  • 발행 : 2018.12.31

초록

This study aimed to examine whether preconsonantal vowel shortening, which occurs in many languages, exists in Chinese. To this end, we compared 15 pairs of Chinese bi-syllabic words with intervocalic unaspirated/aspirated stops. The results revealed that (1) the effect of the feature aspiration of the following stop on the preceding vowel (V1) was neither significant nor consistent though V1 tends to be a little longer before an unaspirated stop; (2) the following unaspirated stop closure (C) was similar to or longer than its aspirated cognate; (3) the durational sum of V1 and C was longer when the stop is unaspirated, and V1 and C had no compensatory relationship; (4) Voice Onset Time (VOT) was significantly longer when the stop is aspirated than unaspirated; (5) the vowel (V2) following VOT was significantly longer when the stop is unaspirated, so the differentials in VOT were partially compensated; (6) despite the partial compensation, the sum of VOT and V2 was longer when the stop is aspirated; (7) words with an intervocalic aspirated stop were longer than those with its unaspirated cognate. It is concluded that while VOT is the most important factor for deciding the timing structure of Chinese words with intervocalic stops, closure duration is crucial for Korean and many other languages.

키워드

참고문헌

  1. Alghamdi, M. M. A. (1990). Analysis, synthesis and perception of voicing in Arabic. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Reading, UK.
  2. Balasubramanian, T. (1981). Duration of vowels in Tamil. Journal of Phonetics, 9(2), 151-161.
  3. Carlson, R., & Granstrom, B. (1986). A search for durational rules in a real-speech data base. Phonetica, 43(1-3), 140-154. https://doi.org/10.1159/000261766
  4. Chen, M. (1970). Vowel length variation as a function of the voicing of the consonant environment. Phonetica, 22(3), 129-159. https://doi.org/10.1159/000259312
  5. Delattre, P. (1962). Some factors of vowel duration and their cross-linguistic validity. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 34(8), 1141-1142. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1918268
  6. Elert, C. C. (1964). Phonologic studies of quantity in Swedish: Based on material from Stoskholm speakers. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell.
  7. Fintoft, K. (1961). The duration of some Norwegian speech sounds. Phonetica, 7(1), 19-39. https://doi.org/10.1159/000258096
  8. House, A. S., & Fairbanks, G. (1953). The influence of consonant environment upon the secondary acoustical characteristics of vowels. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 25(1), 105-113. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1906982
  9. Kim, C. W. (1965). On the autonomy of the tensity feature in stop classification (with special reference to Korean stops). Word, 21(3), 339-359. https://doi.org/10.1080/00437956.1965.11435434
  10. Kim, D. W. (1987). Some phonetic aspects of intervocalic oral stop consonants in British English and Korean. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Reading, UK.
  11. Lin, Y. H. (2007). The sounds of Chinese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  12. Mack, M. (1982). Voicing-dependent vowel duration in English and French: Monolingual and bilingual production. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 71(1), 173-178. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.387344
  13. Maddieson, I., & Gandour, J. (1975). Vowel length before stops of contrasting series. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 58(S1), S61.
  14. Martin, S. E. (1951). Korean phonemics. Language, 27, 519-532. https://doi.org/10.2307/410039
  15. Oh, E. J. (2002). Correlation between consonants' place and vowel duration in English and Korean. Speech Sciences, 9(3), 201-210.
  16. Oh, M., & Johnson, K. (1997). A phonetic study of Korean intervocalic laryngeal consonants. Speech Sciences, 1(1), 83-102.
  17. Peterson, G. E., & Lehiste, I. (1960). Duration of syllable nuclei in English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 32(6), 693-703. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1908183
  18. Port, R. F. (1981). Linguistic timing factors in combination. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 69(1), 262-274. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.385347
  19. Port, R. F., Dalby, J., & O'Dell, M. (1987). Evidence for moratiming in Japanese. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 81(5), 1574-1585. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.394510
  20. Sato, Y. (1993). The durations of syllable-final nasals and the mora hypothesis in Japanese. Phonetica, 50(1), 44-67. https://doi.org/10.1159/000261925
  21. Slis, I. H., & Cohen, A. (1969). On the complex regulating the voiced-voiceless distinction I. Language and Speech, 12(2), 80-102. https://doi.org/10.1177/002383096901200202
  22. Van den Berg, R. J. H. (1988). The perception of voicing in Dutch two-obstruent sequences: A comparison of synthetic and natural speech. Journal of Phonetics, 16(2), 171-180.
  23. Yun, I. (2004). Temporal variation due to tense vs. lax consonants in Korean. Speech Sciences, 11(3), 23-36.
  24. Yun, I. (2009). Vowel duration and the feature of the following consonant. Phonetics and Speech Sciences, 1(1), 41-46.
  25. Yun, I. (2010). Compensation in VC and word. Phonetics and Speech Sciences, 2(3), 81-89.
  26. Zimmerman, S. A., & Sapon, S. M. (1958). Note on vowel duration seen crosslinguistically. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 30(2), 152-153. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1909521