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Linguistics 531-Phonetics

Instructor: Tsan Huang

Phonetics of Korean

Course Project

Jennifer Wilson

Linguistics Department

State University of New York at Buffalo

December 2008

Phonetics of Korean Wilson 2

Contents

Introduction....................................................................................................................... 3

Consonants......................................................................................................................... 3

Plosives ........................................................................................................................... 4

Fricatives...................................................................................................................... 10

Liquids ......................................................................................................................... 12

Nasals ........................................................................................................................... 12

Vowels .............................................................................................................................. 13

Monophthongs............................................................................................................. 14

Diphthongs................................................................................................................... 21

Suprasegmentals ............................................................................................................. 21

Syllable Structure........................................................................................................ 21

Intonation..................................................................................................................... 22

Further Research ............................................................................................................ 23

References ........................................................................................................................ 24


1. Introduction

Korean is the national language of both South Korea and North Korea, with about

42,000,000 speakers in the former and 20,000,000 speakers in the latter according to the

1986 census (Gordon, (ed) 2005). It is also spoken in areas of China, mainly Inner

Mongolia, as well as areas of Japan and Thailand. Korean is currently classified as a

language isolate. However, there is a current hypothesis that places it either within the

Altaic language family or as a relative of Proto-Altaic due to grammatical similarity in

lacking number, gender, articles, fusional morphology, voice, and relative pronouns

(Gordon, (ed) 2005). The classification of Korean is still controversial though, and

conservative linguistic opinion considers Korean to be a language isolate. Dialect

divisions seem to be related to provincial boundaries, resulting in seven dialects (Sohn,

12). These are the Hamkyeng Zone (northeast), the Phyengan Zone (northwest), the

Central Zone, the Chwungcheng Zone (southcentral), the Kyengsang Zone (southeast),

the Cenla Zone (southwest), and the Ceycwu Zone (the island of Ceycwu) (Sohn, 57).

The linguistic data analyzed here is taken from the speech of Junghwa Ahn who

generously agreed to act as my consultant for this project. Junghwa was born in Seoul,

Korea, and completed primary and secondary education there. For that reason, this paper

will be focusing on the Seoul dialect of Korean, the Central Zone. In addition to her first

language of Korean, she began learning a second language, English, when she was 11.

This is not unusual since English is a widely taught as a secondary language in middle

schools and high schools. Junghwa majored in English literature, and previous to acting

as my consultant, she had studied for six months in Canada and one and a half months in

the United States. Korean is both her native and her primary language where she uses it

in the home and with friends.

2. Consonants

From the analysis of my consultant’s data, Korean has 21 different consonant

phonemes (though two of these, the glides /j/ and /w/ are discussed with the vowels).

These are located at five different places of articulation: bilabial, alveo-dental, palatal,

velar and glottal. A three-way distinction of fortis, unaspirated, and aspirated is encoded

in the plosives while a two-way distinction between fortis and aspirated is found in the

alveo-dental fricatives. Table 1 demonstrates the consonant phonemes of Korean:


Table 1 Korean Consonant Phonemes

Bilabial Alveo-dental Palatal Velar Glottal

Nasal m n ŋ

Fortis p' t' c' k'

Unaspirated p t c k

Plosive

Aspirated ph t

h c

h k

h

Fortis s' Fricative

Aspirated sh h

Liquid l

Glides w* j

* bilabial and velar

2.1. Plosives

Korean has plosive phonemes located at the bilabial, alveo-dental, palatal and

velar places of articulation as shown by the following minimal set:

[phan] ‘board’

[than] ‘burnt (adj.)’

[chan] ‘cold (adj.)’

[khan] ‘slot’

In addition to this distinction in place of articulation, Korean also has a distinction

between fortis plosives, aspirated plosives, and unaspirated plosives at each of these

places of articulation in word initial position:

Bilabial

[p’a.li.da] ‘to be laundered’

[pa.li.da] ‘widen’ ‘to be opened’

[pha.li.da] ‘sold’

AlveoAlveoAlveoAlveo----ddddentalentalentalental

[t’e.u.da] ‘to substitute’ ‘to patch up’

[te.u.da] ‘to warm’

[the.u.da] ‘snatch’

Palatal

[c’a.da] ‘sleep’

[ca.da] ‘kick’

[cha.da] ‘be salty’

Velar

[k’e.da] ‘to awaken’ ‘to break’

[ke.da] ‘to fold’

[khe.da] ‘to dig up’ ‘to pry into’

Figure 1 Aspirated Bilabial Plosive

If we look at the waveforms, it is immediately apparent that initial sound in

Figure 1 is aspirated. This is even more apparent once we look at the spectrogram and see

the energy concentration between 1000 and 4000Hz. When we listen to the sound files

we can hear this aspiration, and when we measure Voice Onset Time from the initial

burst to where voicing begins at around .01 (s), we get a positive VOT measurement of

about 95 ms. When this is compared to Figure 2, the unaspirated bilabial stop, we

measure a VOT of approximately 10 ms, explaining the aspirated/unaspirated contrast

between these two phonemic plosives.

Figure 2 Unaspirated Bilabial Plosive

Finally, when we look at the fortis bilabial plosive, we can see just from the waveform

that the amplitude is quite strong. Furthermore, voicing begins almost immediately with a

positive VOT of 1 or 2 ms at most. As you can see, the vowel formants are particularly

clear from the beginning of the spectrogram in Figure 3.


Figure 3 Fortis Bilabial Plosive

Based on my consultant’s production, I found a difference in this contrast when

the plosives occurred in word medial position, specifically between two voiced sounds.

According to Sohn (1999), “both aspirated and tensed [fortis] stops are constant in sound

quality, with a minimum of allophonic variation” (154). However, the unaspirated

plosives have allophonic variants that are lightly voiced when they occur between two

voiced sounds. This can be seen in my consultant’s pronunciation of the following

(unfortunately the sound files are not clear enough to show this):

/lu.pi/ [lu.bi] ‘ruby’

/c’a.ta/ [c’a.da] ‘cold’

/a.ki/ [a.gi] ‘baby’

/can.to/ [cɑn.do] ‘convert’

The three-way distinction of fortis plosives, unaspirated plosives, and aspirated

plosives is neutralized in coda position, either word finally or when followed by a

consonant. The plosive is simply pronounced as an unreleased stop when it occurs in

either of these positions

/ip/ [ip˺] ‘mouth’

/iph/ [ip˺] ‘leaf’

/nat/[nat˺] ‘cereal grains’

/nath/[nat˺] ‘piece, unit’

I was unable to find a fortis bilabial plosive or a fortis alveo-dental plosive in the

coda position to complete these minimal sets. However, Sohn explains this when he


writes “No Korean word has a /p’/ before a consonant or a word boundary, but if any

word were to have it, it too would become a [p] in the given environments” (165). He

also explains that no Korean words have /t’/ in this position either.

If we look at /ip/ ‘mouth and /iph/ more closely (Figure 4 and 5), we can see that

there is no unaspirated/aspirated contrast in coda position. The two phonemic sounds are

both phonetically realized as the unreleased [p˺]. My consultant explained that if these

sounds were heard in isolation, she could not tell them apart, effectively demonstrating

that these are homophonous pairs to her, and the phonemic contrast is neutralized.

Figure 4 Coda Neutralization


The velar plosives also demonstrate coda neutralization:

/cənjək/ [cəɲək˺] ‘evening’

/pak’/ [pak˺] ‘outside’

/pu.əkh.pi[pu.ək˺.p’i] ‘kitchen broom’

In addition to the neutralization of the bilabial, alveo-dental and velar plosives in

coda position, I found that palatal stops and alveo-palatal fricatives became [t˺] when

they occurred in coda position:

/nac/ [nat˺] ‘daytime’

/nach/ [nat˺] ‘face’

/nash/ [nat˺] ‘sickle’

/kas’ta/ [kat˺.t’a] ‘went’


Again, /c’/ does not occur word finally or in coda position.

It is possible to be sure that the phonemic contrasts are neutralized in this position

by both looking at the waveforms/spectrograms as well as listening to my consultant’s

pronunciation. When I asked her to pronounce the words that are phonetically realized as

[nat˺], she was quick to point out that they all sound the same. Figure 6 shows /nash/

‘sickle’ as an example of how these words are phonetically realized. As you can see there

is no energy concentration in the higher frequency range signaling the strident fricative

/sh/ because /s

h/ is pronounced as [t˺] in coda position.


Finally, the glottal fricative /h/ is also phonetically realized as [t˺] when it occurs

in coda position, unless it is followed or preceded by an unaspirated stop (Sohn 165).

/hi.ɨh/ [hi.ɨt˺] ‘the letter h’

When it is followed or preceded by an unaspirated stop, this stop becomes aspirated as in

the words below:

/coh.ta/ [co.tha] ‘is good’

/manh.ke/ [man.khe] ‘in abundance’

/pap.ha.ta./ [pa.pha.da] ‘cook rice’

/pat.hi.ta/ [pa.chi.da] ‘supply’

In conclusion, contrast is neutralized among alveo-dental plosives, palatal plosives, and

fricatives (except for when the voiceless glottal fricative is preceded/followed by an

unaspirated stop) in coda position.


By analyzing the phonetic realizations of the phonemic plosive contrasts, we

discover the following allophonic variants of the phonemic plosives:

Table 2 Plosive Allophones

Bilabial Alveo-dental Palatal Velar

Word Initial [p'] [t'] [c’] [k']

Word Initial [p] [t] [c] [k]

Word Initial [ph] [t

h] [c

h] [k

h]

Intervocalic [p’], [ph] , [b] [t’], [t

h] ,[d] [c’], [ch], [ɉ] [k

h] , [k’], [g]

Coda [p˺] [t˺] [t˺] [k˺]

We could write a specific rule to show that [b] and [p˺] are allophones of the phonemic

unaspirated bilabial plosive in the following way:

/p/ � [b] / [+voice]_[+voice] and /p/� [p˺] / {_#, _C}

However, it is more logical to write a general rule for how all the unaspirated

plosive phonemes will be pronounced in intervocalic positions as well as how all plosive

phonemes will be phonetically realized in coda positions.

/Unaspirated Plosives/� [+voice] / [+voice]_[+voice]

/Plosives/� [-release] /{_#, _C }

In other words, unaspirated plosive phonemes in Korean are phonetically realized as

voiced plosives when they occur between two voiced sounds, while all plosive phonemes

are phonetically realized as unreleased stops in coda position. However, this does not

take into account the palatal plosives since in coda position these stops have the alveo-

dental unreleased plosive allophone [t˺]. A separate rule would have to be written for the

palatal stops.

/palatal plosives/� [t˺] /{_#, _C}

This rule could be expanded to include the fricatives as well as long as we noted the

exception of the glottal fricative /h/ when it occurs near an unaspirated stop:

{palatal stops, fricatives}�[t˺] /{_#, _C}


*When followed/preceded by an unaspirated plosive /h/ does not become [t˺]. It instead causes the

unaspirated plosive to become aspirated.

2.2. Fricatives

Korean has three phonemic fricative consonants as demonstrated in my

consultant’s speech. The first phonemic fricative is a voiceless glottal fricative /h/. It can

occur word initially as a contrastive phoneme as shown by the minimal set below:

[he] ‘do it (imp.)’

[she] ‘bird’

[ke] ‘dog’

[pe] ‘pear’, ‘belly’ or ship’

[me] ‘’whip (N)’ or ‘hawk’

[ne] ‘yes’

/h/ can also occur word medially in onset position as [h]:

[hwe.has’ə] ‘snacks’

[c’i.ha] ‘basement’

As mentioned previously, /h/ has the allophonic variant [t˺] in coda position

unless it is followed or preceded by an unaspirated stop, in which case it causes the

unaspirated stop to become aspirated. This would explain why my consultant was unable

to think of a word that ended in [h] or had [h] in coda position when asked. To

summarize, the voiceless glottal fricative has the following allophones: [h] in onset

position, [t˺] in coda position, and [h] when it causes the following or preceding

unaspirated plosive to be phonetically realized as aspirated.

In addition to the voiceless glottal fricative, Korean also has two fricative

phonemes at the alveo-dental place of articulation. The /sh/ has some aspiration, whereas

the /s’/ has none. The minimal pairs below show this contrast in word initial position:

[s’a] ‘cheap

[sha ] ‘buy it (imp.)’

[ka.sho] ‘go and’

[ka.s’o] ‘went’

If we look at the waveforms, we can see quite distinctively the aspiration found in

/sh/ (Figure 7) and the lack of this aspiration in the fortis /s’/ (Figure 8). Furthermore, the


spectrogram for /sh/ shows the energy concentration characteristic of aspiration just

before the vowel in Figure 7. This is clearly absent in Figure #. When listening to the

sound files, I noticed that if the clip is begun just before the aspiration in [sha] it sounds

like [th], whereas understandably this is not the case in [s’a].

Figure 7 Aspirated Alveo-dental Fricative

Figure 8 Fortis Alveo-dental Fricative

When the alveolar fricatives occur before front high vowels or the semivowel /j/, they are

palatalized. The following minimal pair demonstrates that while the alveo-dental

fricatives are palatalized, they are still contrastive:

/shi/ [ʃhi] ‘seed’

/s’i/ [ʃ’i] ‘city’

If we look at the waveforms, we can still see the aspiration in Figure 9, and the

lack of aspiration in Figure 10. Furthermore, we can see more energy at higher

frequencies in the spectrograms.

Figure 9 Palatalized /sh/

Figure 10 Palatalized /s’/

2.3. Liquids

Korean has one liquid phoneme, the alveo-dental lateral liquid /l/. This phoneme

has two allophones which occur in complementary distribution: the lateral liquid /l/ and

the flap /ſ/. The lateral liquid occurs in the coda position as shown by my consultant and

described by my references (Sohn 155):

/mul/ [mul] ‘water’

/pal.mok/ [pal.mok˺] ‘ankle’

Additionally, my consultant also produces the lateral liquid in word initial

position (despite the fact that Sohn describes the /l/ as being pronounced as a flap in word

initial sounds in Korean):

/la.ti.o/ [la.di.o]

In my consultant’s production, when /l/ appears between voiced sounds it is

pronounced as a flap as in the following word:

/mə.li/ [mə.ſi] ‘head’

Nasals

Korean has three nasal phonemes that occur at the bilabial, alveo-dental and velar

places of articulation: /m/, /n/ and /ŋ/ , though the velar nasal /ŋ/ only occurs in coda

position. The following minimal set shows these contrastive phonemes in coda position

both word medially and word finally:

[cɑm.do] ‘viscosity’

[cɑn.do] ‘convert’

[cɑŋ.do] ‘degree’

[thɨm] ‘filled with (N)’

[thɨn] ‘filled with’

[thɨŋ] ‘back’

In addition to the coda position, the bilabial and alveolar nasals can also occur in

onset position, both word initially and word medially:

[me] ‘whip (N)’ or ‘hawk’

[ne] ‘yes’

[ko.mu] ‘rubber’

[ko.nu] ‘ancient game’

3. Vowels

According to my references, Korean has ten phonemic monophthongs (Sohn 156).

Table 3 Korean Phonemic Vowels

front back

unround round unround round

High i y ɨ u

Mid e Ø ə o

Low ɛ a

In a study conducted by Yang (1996), Korean vowel formants as produced by ten female

speakers from Seoul were measured to come up with the following average F1, F2, and

F3 formant values:

Figure 11 Created from Yang's Reported Vowel Formant Values

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

3500

4000

aɛe

i

o

u

əɨa 986 1794 2957ɛ 677 2285 3063

e 650 2377 3068

i 344 2814 3471

o 499 1029 3068

u 422 1021 3024

ə 765 1371 3009ɨ 447 1703 2997

F1 F2 F3

By referring to my sources and comparing these values to those produced by my

consultant, I was able to determine which phonemic vowels my consultant had in her

native dialect, that of the central zone.


Monophthongs

While Korean has ten phonemic vowels according to Sohn, my consultant only

has seven of these vowels. A common feature of the central dialect (which my consultant

speaks) is that /y/ and /Ø/ are pronounced as the diphthongs [wi] and [we] (Comrie).

Since my consultant does this, she does not have a roudness/unroundedness distinction in

her front vowels.

For example, /wi/ ‘stomach’ can be pronounced as: [y] or [wi] based on the

dialect. My consultant pronounces this word as [wi], showing the lack of /y/. Some other

examples demonstrating the lack of /y/ and /Ø/ can be found in my consultant’s

pronunciation of the following words:

Table 4 Two Missing Phonemic Vowels

Gloss Possible pronunciations My consultant’s pronunciation

‘rat’ [cy] or [cwi] [cwi]

‘ear’ [ky] or [kwi] [kwi]

‘beef’ [sØ.go.gi] or [swe.go.gi] [swe.go.gi]

‘monster’ [kØ.mul] or [kwe.mul] [kwe.mul]

In addition to lacking /y/ and /Ø/ vowel distinctions, my consultant also does not

distinguish between /e/ and /ɛ/. While the following two words have a phonemic vowel

quality distinction within other dialects according to Sohn, my consultant considers them

to have the same vowel:

/ne/ [ne] ‘you’

/ɛ/ [e] ‘effort’

Furthermore, while my references also described a system of vowel length

contrasts in Korean, my consultant clearly lacks a distinction in vowel length as

demonstrated by the following minimal pairs which are homophonous to her:


/i:l/ [il] ‘work’

/il/ [il] ‘one’

/ne:/ [ne] ‘yes’

/ne/ [ne] ‘you’

/ɛ/ [e] ‘effort’

/ɛ:/ [e] ‘baby’

/pu:l/ [pul] ‘blow’

/pul/ [pul] ‘fire’

/mo:ca/ [mo.ca] ‘mother and son’

/moca/ [mo.ca] ‘cap, hat’

/tɨ:l/ [tɨ:l] ‘field’

/tɨl/ [tɨl] ‘hold up’

/pjə:ng/ [pjə:ŋ] ‘illness’

/pjəng/ [pjəŋ] ‘bottle’

My consultant’s lack of a phonemic distinction based on vowel length is

unsurprising since younger generations no longer have this contrast. According to Sohn,

speakers over 50 as of 2000 are the main Korean speakers that still retain a vowel length

contrast.

The seven phonemic vowels found in my consultant’s speech are listed in the

chart below:

Table 5 Phonemic Vowels in My Consultant’s Speech

front back

unround unround round

High i ɨ u

Mid e ə o

Low a

High Vowels

My consultant has three phonemic high vowels. These are: the front unrounded /i/,

the back unrounded /ɨ/, and the back rounded /u/. Since my consultant does not have the

front rounded vowels /y/ and /Ø/, she only has the roundedness/unroundedness contrast in

the back vowels.


The spectrogram for /i/, Figure 12, shows a clear F1 at around 380Hz and an F2 at

around 2900 Hz. This is similar to the average formants for this vowel (F1: 344 Hz, F2:

2814 Hz) measured by Yang.

Figure 12 /i/ Vowel Formants

When we look at the spectrogram for /ɨ/, we can see a clear F1 at around 445 Hz, and an

F2 at approximately 1850 Hz. Again when we compare Yang’s averaged vowel formants

for Korean female speakers, we find an F1 of 447 Hz and an F2 of 1703 Hz.

Figure 13 /ɨɨɨɨ/ Vowel Formants

The last high vowel /u/ can be seen in Figure 14. The expected F1 of around 400 Hz can

be clearly seen, and the F2 is about 1000Hz. Since my consultant was a female speaker

from Seoul, it is expected that her vowel formants should closely align with those

average vowel formants measured by Yang.


Figure 14 /u/ Vowel Formants

The three high phonemic vowels can be see contrasted in the following minimal

set:

/i/ /ɨ/ /u/

/ki/ [ki] ‘flag’ /kɨ/ [kɨ] ‘that’ /ku/ [ku] ‘nine’

Mid Vowels

My consultant also has three phonemic mid vowels: the front mid vowel /e/, the

back unrounded /ə/ and the back rounded /o/. Figure 15 shows my consultant’s vowel

formants for the front vowel /e/:

Figure 15 /e/ Vowel Formants

There is a clear F1 at around 570 Hz, and an F2 of about 2550 Hz. I chose to transcribe

this vowel as /e/ for two reasons. First, the formant values most closely matched the /e/

average values in Yang’s study, and second, it sounded more like an /e/ to me.


Furthermore, when we look at Yang’s vowel formants averages in more detail, we find

that the average vowel formants for /e/ and /ɛ/ are quite similar. Since my consultant is

also from Seoul, this is unsurprising.

Table 6 /e/ vs. /ɛɛɛɛ / for Korean Females from Seoul

In addition to the front mid vowel /e/, my consultant also has a mid unrounded

back vowel /ə/:

Figure 16 /əəəə/ Vowel Formants

With an F1 of about 700 Hz, and an F2 of near 1150 Hz, we can see that my consultant’s

formant values are slightly lower than the average formant values found by Yang.

However, these are still quite distinctive from the other mid vowels.

Figure 17 /o/ Vowel Formants

ɛ E

F1 677 650

F2 2285 2377


The last mid vowel /o/ has an F1 of around 550 Hz, and an F2 of about 900 Hz. Though

the F2 is slightly lower than Yang’s measurements, this vowel is still quite distinctive

compared to the other phonemic vowels. The contrast between /e/ and the mid back

vowels can be seen in the minimal set provided at the end of the discussion on

monophthongs. The mid back vowel contrast can be seen in the following minimal pair:

/mək/ [mək˺] ‘ink-stick’

/mok/ [mok˺] ‘neck’

Low Vowels

Finally, the last phonemic vowel is the low back unrounded vowel /a/ which can

be seen in the following figure:

Figure 18 /a/ Vowel Formants

The F1 can be seen at around 900 Hz, while the F2 is near 1650 Hz. As expected, these

values are once again quite similar to the values measured by Yang (F1: 986 Hz, F2:

1794Hz).

When the F1 and F2 formant values of each phonemic vowel are plotted on a

formant chart (arranged at Bark intervals) we can see the following vowel space:


Figure 19 My Consultant’s Vowel Space

After looking at the F1/F2 relationships plotted in the last figure, we would

ultimately derive a vowel chart for my consultant’s seven phonemic vowels similar to the

one below:

Figure 20 IPA Vowel Chart for Junghwa

Six of the seven phonemic vowels found in my consultant’s speech are

demonstrated by the following minimal set:

/a/ [sha] ‘buy it (imp.)’

/o/ [sho] ‘ox’

/ə/ [shə] ‘stop’

/e/ [she] ‘count’

/i/ [ʃhi] ‘city’

/u/ [shu] ‘A+, excelent’

There is no word consisting of the phonemes: /sh/ + /ɨ/.


3.1. Diphthongs

Korean has eleven diphthongs according to Sohn. All of the diphthongs are on-

glides, and they can be separated into those that have the semivowel /j/ as the on-glide

and those that have the semivowel /w/ as the on-glide. I had originally considered /j/ and

/w/ to be consonant phonemes and the following words to consist of these glides followed

by a monophthong. My consultant, however, considers the following set of words to have

no initial consonant sound. For that reason, I chose to treat the glides /j/ and /w/ as part of

a diphthong. The combination of one of these sounds with another vowel gives us the ten

diphthongs found in my consultant’s speech. The following minimal set illustrates the six

diphthongs with the /j/ on-glide:

/ja/ [jak˺] ‘medicine’

/jo/ [jok˺] ‘swear’

/jə/ [jək˺] ‘station’ /je/ [je] ‘example’

/ju/ [juk˺] ‘six’

In addition to the six diphthongs that take the semi-vowel /j/ as the on-glide, my

consultant has four diphthongs that take the semi-vowel /w/ as an on-glide:

/wi/ [wi] ‘up’

/we/ [we] ‘why’

/wa/ [wa] ‘come (imp)’

/wə/ [wən] ‘hope (N)’

While my consultant says that the sound /wə/ without a nasal coda exists, it cannot stand

as a word itself, and so I included the near-minimal pair [wən] ‘hope (N)’. While I

mentioned previously that Korean is described as having 11 diphthongs, my consultant

only has ten. This is due to the fact that for her the diphthongs /we/ and /wɛ/ are the same

sound.

4. Suprasegmentals

4.1. Syllable Structure

According to Sohn (1999), the syllabic structure of Korean can be described as:

[.(C)(G)V(:)(C).] with G referring to the glides [j] and [w] (160). Since my consultant


does not have a phonemic contrast of vowel length, her syllable structure could be

described as: [(C)(G)V(C)]. An example of a word with the most complicated syllable

structure permitted is below:

[pjəŋ] ‘bottle’

Permitted syllable combinations would include words such as the following:

Table 7 Syllabic Structure

Syllable Structure Korean Gloss

CV [s’a] ‘cheap’

CVC [mul] ‘water’

GV [wi] ‘up’

GVC [wən] ‘hope (N)’

CGV [kwi] ‘ear’

CGVC [pjəŋ] ‘bottle’

4.2. Intonation

During the time I had to work with my consultant, I also determined some initial

intonation contours. The two main contours I analyzed involved a difference between

declarative sentences and polar questions. The declarative sentences I was able to look at

ended a lower F0 at the end of them, than the polar questions I analyzed. Figure 21 shows

the question ‘Did you have fun?’, while Figure 22 shows the declarative ‘I am Junghwa’:

Figure 21

Figure 22

If we look at the pitch contour, there does not seem to be much of an intonational

difference during the beginning of the utterance. However, in the last 150 ms, she raises

her intonation for the polar question, while there is a gradual decline in pitch over the last

400 ms for the declarative sentence. This contrast is even more distinctive in the next two

figures which show the final word in a polar question/declarative pair:

Figure #: Are Jang, Hojun, and Hejin studying?

Figure #: Jang, Hojun, and Hejin are studying.

Figure 23

Figure 24

Again, the F0 of the final word in the polar question is significantly higher at about 250

Hz than the F0 of the same final word in the declarative at about 140 Hz.

5. Further Research

Due to the scope of this paper, there are a number of interesting phenomena that

could benefit from further research. Examining further intonational patterns would be an

interesting avenue to pursue. Additionally, I noticed that despite the rule that alveo-dental

palatals are phonetically realized as unreleased alveo-dental stops in coda position, I did

uncover an instance where this did not happen. In my research I discovered a rule

concerning specific instances where this could happen, but due to limited time was

unable to explore it more fully. I also discovered at the very end of the semester that

plosives which occur immediately following an unreleased stop seemed to be

phonetically realized as fortis plosives. However, I was unable to collect enough data to

verify this due to exams. All of these avenues could lead to further research.


6. References

Bernard Comrie (ed.). The World's Major Languages. London: Croom Helm, pp. 881-

898.

Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.), 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth

edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com/.

Sohn, H.-M. (1999). The Korean Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Yang. A comparative study of American English and Korean vowels produced by male

and female speakers (1996) Journal of Phonetics, 24 (2) pp 245-261.

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