Phonetics and Speech Sciences (말소리와 음성과학)

Korean Society of Speech Sciences (한국음성학회)
권호 표지
DOI QR코드

DOI QR Code

A perception-based analysis of voice onset time (VOT) dissimilation in Korean

  • Hijo Kang (Department of English Language Education, Chosun University) ;
  • Mira Oh (Department of English Language and Literature, Chonnam National University)
  • Received : 2024.01.30
  • Accepted : 2024.03.11
  • Published : 2024.03.31
Download PDF
⟨ Previous Next ⟩

Abstract

This study examines the perceptual motivation behind dissimilation. Consistent with previous arguments suggesting that dissimilation originates from perception rather than production (Coetzee, 2005; Kiparsky, 2003; Scheer, 2013), we hypothesized that an oral stop with short of voice onset time (VOT) would be recognized as non-aspirated more often when it is followed by an aspirated stop with a long VOT. This hypothesis was tested through a perception experiment in which 32 Korean listeners made judgments on the first consonant of C1VC2V words manipulated with C1 VOT and C2 types. The results revealed that aspirated-based C1 was recognized as aspirated or tense depending on the duration of VOT, while lenis-based C1 was consistently recognized as lenis. The dissimilatory effect of aspirated C2 was confirmed as anticipated, and furthermore, tense C2 increased the ratio of tense responses more than aspirated C2. These results provide evidence of a perceptual bias against recurrent aspirated stops, which may play a role in activating a dissimilatory rule or constraint in a language. The assimilatory effect of tense C2 is in consistent with findings indicating that word-initial tensification is facilitated by the following tense stop in Korean (Kang & Oh, 2016; H. Kim, 2016).

Keywords

References

  1. Ahn, H. (2000). On the lenis stop consonants in Korean. Language Research, 36(2), 361-379.
  2. Beddor, P. S., Harnsberger, J. D., & Lindemann, S. (2002). Language-specific patterns of vowel-to-vowel coarticulation: Acoustic structures and their perceptual correlates. Journal of Phonetics, 30(4), 591-627.
  3. Begus, G. (2016, September). The phonetics of aspirate dissimilation: Grassmann's law in georgian. Poster presented at the South Caucasian Chalk Circle. Paris, France.
  4. Blevins, J. (2013). Evolutionary phonology: A holistic approach to sound change typology. In P. Honeybone, & J. Salmons (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of historical phonology (pp. 485-500). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
  5. Bye, P. (2011). Dissimilation: Volume III. Phonological processes. In M. van Oostendorp, C. J. Ewen, E. Hume, & K. Rice (Eds.), The Blackwell companion to phonology (pp. 1408-1433). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
  6. Cho, T. (2004). Prosodically conditioned strengthening and vowel-to-vowel coarticulation in English. Journal of Phonetics, 32(2), 141-176. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0095-4470(03)00043-3
  7. Coetzee, A. W. (2005). The obligatory contour principle in the perception of English. In S. Frota, M. Vigario, & M. J. Freitas (Eds.), Prosodies: With special reference to Iberian languages (pp. 223-246). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
  8. Cser, A. (2013). Basic types of phonological change. In P. Honeybone, & J. Salmons (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of historical phonology (pp. 193-204). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
  9. Davis, S. (1991). Coronals and the phonotactics of nonadjacent consonants in English. In C. Paradis, & J. F. Prunet (Eds.), The special status of coronals: Internal and external evidence: Phonetics and phonology (Vol. 2, pp. 49-60). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
  10. Frisch, S. A., Pierrehumbert, J. B., & Broe, M. B. (2004). Similarity avoidance and the OCP. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 22(1), 179-228.
  11. Gafos, A., & Lombardi, L. (1999). Consonant transparency and vowel echo. North East Linguistics Society, 29(2), 8.
  12. Gallagher, G. (2010). Perceptual distinctness and long-distance laryngeal restrictions. Phonology, 27(3), 435-480. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0952675710000217
  13. Gay, T. (1974). A cinefluorographic study of vowel production. Journal of Phonetics, 2(4), 255-266. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0095-4470(19)31296-3
  14. Gay, T. (1977). Articulatory movements in VCV sequences. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 62(1), 183-193. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.381480
  15. Goldinger, S. D., Kleider, H. M., & Shelley, E. (1999). The marriage of perception and memory: Creating two-way illusions with words and voices. Memory & Cognition, 27(2), 328-338.
  16. Ito, C. (2014). Compound tensification and laryngeal co-occurrence restrictions in Yanbian Korean. Phonology, 31(3), 349-398. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0952675714000190
  17. Jatteau, A., & Hejna, M. (2016). Dissimilation can be gradient: Evidence from Aberystwyth English. Papers in Historical Phonology, 1, 359-386.
  18. Kang, H., & Oh, M. (2016). Dynamic and static aspects of laryngeal co-occurrence restrictions in Korean. Studies in Phonetics, Phonology and Morphology, 22(1), 3-34. https://doi.org/10.17959/SPPM.2016.22.1.3
  19. Kang, H., & Oh, M. (2019). The asymmetric tense consonant effects in compound and word-initial tensions in Korean. Studies in Phonetics, Phonology and Morphology, 25(1), 3-30.
  20. Kang, H., & Oh, M. (2024). A phonetic study of bidirectional duration modulation in Korean oral stops. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 49(1), 31-50.
  21. Kang, K. H., & Guion, S. G. (2008). Clear speech production of Korean stops: Changing phonetic targets and enhancement strategies. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 124(6), 3909-3917.
  22. Kang, Y. (2014). Voice onset time merger and development of tonal contrast in Seoul Korean stops: A corpus study. Journal of Phonetics, 45, 76-90. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2014.03.005
  23. Kim, H. (2016). Contextual distribution of English loanword word-initial tensification in Korean. Studies in Phonetics, Phonology and Morphology, 22(2), 245-288. https://doi.org/10.17959/SPPM.2016.22.2.245
  24. Kim, M. R. (2019). A study of L1 phonetic drift in the voice onset times of Korean learners of English with long L2 exposure. Phonetics and Speech Sciences, 11(4), 35-43. https://doi.org/10.13064/KSSS.2019.11.4.035
  25. Kim, M. R. (2021). Voice onset time in English and Korean stops with respect to a sound change. Phonetics and Speech Sciences, 13(2), 9-17. https://doi.org/10.13064/KSSS.2021.13.2.009
  26. Kim, M. R., & Duanmu, S. (2004). "Tense" and "lax" stops in Korean. Journal of East Asian Linguistics, 13(1), 59-104.
  27. Kim, S. (2016). Phonological trends in Seoul Korean compound tensification (Master's thesis). Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea.
  28. Kiparsky, P. (2003). The phonological basis of sound change. In B. D. Joseph, & R. D. Janda (Eds.), The handbook of historical linguistics (pp. 311-342). Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell.
  29. Ladefoged, P., & Maddieson, I. (1996). The sounds of the world's languages. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
  30. Lee, H., Holliday, J. J., & Kong, E. J. (2020). Diachronic change and synchronic variation in the Korean stop laryngeal contrast. Language and Linguistics Compass, 14(7), e12374.
  31. Lee, H., & Jongman, A. (2012). Effects of tone on the three-way laryngeal distinction in Korean: An acoustic and aerodynamic comparison of the Seoul and South Kyungsang dialects. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 42(2), 145-169.
  32. Lee, Y., & Yoon, K. (2016). A study on the voice onset times of the Seoul Corpus males in their twenties. Phonetics and Speech Sciences, 8(4), 1-8.
  33. MacEachern, M. R. (1999). Laryngeal cooccurrence restrictions. New York, NY: Garland.
  34. Manuel, S. Y. (1990). The role of contrast in limiting vowel-to-vowel coarticulation in different languages. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 88(3), 1286-1298. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.399705
  35. Manuel, S. Y., & Krakow, R. A. (1984). Universal and language particular aspects of vowel-to-vowel coarticulation. Haskins laboratories status report on speech research (No. 77/78). Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED247626.pdf#page=73
  36. McCarthy, J. J. (1986). OCP effects: Gemination and antigemination. Linguistic Inquiry, 17(2), 207-263.
  37. Murray, R. W. (2013). The early history of historical phonology. In P. Honeybone, & J. Salmons (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of historical phonology (pp. 11-31). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
  38. Oh, M., Kim, D., & Kang, H. (2020). Duration modulation in Korean stops: Nonlocal similarity avoidance vs. timing regulation. Studies in Phonetics, Phonology and Morphology, 26(1), 103-125.
  39. Ohala, J. J. (1981). The listener as source of sound change. In C. S. Masek, R. A. Hendrick, & M. F. Miller (Eds.), Papers from the parasession on language and behavior (pp. 178-203). Chicago, IL: Chicago Linguistic Society.
  40. Ohala, J. J. (1993). The phonetics of sound change. In C. Jones (Ed.), Historical linguistics: Problems and perspectives (pp. 237-278). London, UK: Longman.
  41. Ohala, J. J. (1997). The relation between phonetics and phonology. In W. J. Hardcastle, & J. Laver (Eds.), The handbook of phonetic sciences (pp. 674-694). Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
  42. Ohala, J. J. (2012). The listener as a source of sound change: An update. In M. J. Sole, & D. Recasens (Eds.), The initiation of sound change: Perception, production, and social factors (pp. 21-26). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins.
  43. Ohman, S. E. G. (1966). Coarticulation in VCV utterances: Spectrographic measurements. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 39(1), 151-168. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1909864
  44. R Core Team. (2021). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing: Vienna, Austria. Retrieved from https://www.R-project.org/
  45. Scheer, T. (2013). How diachronic is synchronic grammar? Crazy rules, regularity, and naturalness. In P. Honeybone, & J. Salmons (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of historical phonology (pp. 313-336). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
  46. Silva, D. J. (2006a). Variation in voice onset time for Korean stops: A case for recent sound change. Korean Linguistics, 13(1), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1075/kl.13.01djs
  47. Silva, D. J. (2006b). Acoustic evidence for the emergence of tonal contrast in contemporary Korean. Phonology, 23(2), 287-308. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0952675706000911
  48. Suzuki, K. (1988). A typological investigation of dissimilation(Doctoral dissertation). University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ.
  49. Svantesson, J. O., & Karlsson, A. (2012). Preaspiration in modern and old Mongolian. Suomalais-Ugrilaisen Seuran Toimituksia, 264, 453-464.
  50. Svantesson, J. O., Tsendina, A., Karlsson, A., & Franzen, V. (2005). The phonology of Mongolian. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
  51. Walker, R., Byrd, D., & Mpiranya, F. (2008). An articulatory view of Kinyarwanda coronal harmony. Phonology, 25(3), 499-535.
  52. Walter, M. A. (2007). Repetition avoidance in human language(Doctoral dissertation). Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.
  53. Yip, M. (1989). Feature geometry and cooccurrence restrictions. Phonology, 6(2), 349-374. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0952675700001068
  54. Whalen, D. H., Shaw, P., Noiray, A., & Antony, R. (2011, Aug). Analogs of Tahltan consonant harmony in English CVC syllables. Proceedings of the 17th International Congress of the Phonetic Sciences (pp. 2129-2132). Hong Kong, China.