Reinterpretation of Stop Production in Korean Elderly Speakers

Researchers have claimed that Korean younger speakers tend to less clearly differentiate aspirated and lax stops with VOT values while older speakers clearly differentiate these two stops with VOT values. To explain this phenomena, the current study consider both an aging effect and a general sound shift. For this study, VOT values and F0 of Korean stops produced by eight male speakers(years of birth were 1942 ~ 1952) analyzed using Praat. Their productions were compared with the values of participants whose year of birth were 1943 ~ 1952) in Silva(2006)'s research. Silva's research was conducted in 2004 using the same methods. The result shows that 2014's VOT gap between aspirated and lax stops and less F0 gap between aspirated and lax stops than those of 2004. When the F0 values related to physical conditions of the larynx is considered, it could be analyzed as the following: to distinguish the three-way phonation type clearly, older speakers depend on the VOT value more instead of F0 which they have difficulty to control.

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