2006/08/01 by David J. Silva · 1 voice · 8 citations
Computer Science · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Linguistic Variation and Morphology #Phonetics and Phonology Research #Speech Recognition and Synthesis
paper · doi:10.1017/s0952675706000911
openalex publication_date 2006/08/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Acoustic evidence suggests that contemporary Seoul Korean may be developing a tonal system, which is arising in the context of a nearly completed change in how speakers use voice onset time (VOT) to mark the language's distinction among tense, lax and aspirated stops. Data from 36 native speakers of varying ages indicate that while VOT for tense stops has not changed since the 1960s, VOT differences between lax and aspirated stops have decreased, in some cases to the point of complete overlap. Concurrently, the mean F0 for words beginning with lax stops is significantly lower than the mean F0 for comparable words beginning with tense or aspirated stops. Hence the underlying contrast between lax and aspirated stops is maintained by younger speakers, but is phonetically manifested in terms of differentiated tonal melodies: laryngeally unmarked (lax) stops trigger the introduction of a default L tone, while laryngeally marked stops (aspirated and tense) introduce H, triggered by a feature specification for [stiff].