• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.1-10
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• 2022

The Korean polysemic ending '-(eu)lgeol' can has two different meanings, 'guess' and 'regret'. These are expressed by different boundary-tone types: a rising tone for guess, a falling one for regret. Therefore the sentence-final boundary-tone type is the most salient prosodic feature. However, besides tone type, the pitch difference between the final and penultimate syllables of '-(eu)lgeol' can also affect semantic discrimination. To investigate this aspect, we conducted a perception test using two sentences that were morphologically and syntactically identical. These two sentences were spoken using different boundary-tone types by a Korean native speaker. From these two sentences, the experimental stimuli were generated by artificially raising or lowering the pitch of the boundary syllable by 1Qt while fixing the pitch of the penultimate syllable and boundary-tone type. Thirty Korean native speakers participated in three levels of perceptual test, in which they were asked to mark whether the experimental sentences they listened to were perceived as guess or regret. The results revealed that regardless of boundary-tone types, the larger the pitch difference between the final and penultimate syllable in the positive direction, the more likely it is perceived as guess, and the smaller the pitch difference in the negative direction, the more likely it is perceived as regret.