The role of faithfulness in imperfect overlapping in Korean blends: A nonce word study

Abstract

This paper reports on a nonce word study of imperfect overlapping in Korean blends where speakers rated blends with various pairs of segments in a possible overlapping position (e.g. kata+pami = katami). The results show that Korean speakers prefer blends with segments with a laryngeal feature difference (/p/ vs. /ph/) as overlapping segments in comparison to pairs with a place (/p/ and /k/) or manner (/p/ and /m/) feature differences. Moreover, Korean speakers preferred blends that retained certain segments. When fortis/aspirated stops are in competition with lenis stops (e.g. katha+tami), the resultant blends with fortis/aspirated stops are rated higher (kathami is rated higher than katami). This paper argues that these preferences arise from the faithfulness rankings required in the phonology of Korean; they do not require a construction-specific grammar just for blends.

Consonantal decomposition in interlanguage mapping*

“…Korean has three degrees of VOT (voice onset time) for stops and affricates, while Russian has only two (Silva 2006, Ahn 2010, Ahn & Iverson 2004, Ahn & Lee 2011, Lee et al 2014 Moreover, the phonetic values of VOT for Russian and Korean stops and affricates are quite different. The following table shows the VOT values of initial plosives in Russian (Table 1).…”

“…In /pasxa/ ➔ [p'a.sɨ.ha] 'Easter', moreover, no coda /k/ can be posited after the epenthetic vowel /ɨ/. The /ɨ/Àepenthesis is employed to maintain the input /s/ in an onset because the Korean syllable structure does not allow a fricative syllablefinally (Ahn 2010). Therefore, no coda consonant, such as the velar /k/, is allowed after an epenthetic /ɨ/ in loan adaptation.…”