Why are Korean tense stops acquired so early?: The role of acoustic properties

Abstract

Transcription-based studies have shown that tense stops appear before aspirated or lax stops in most Korean-acquiring children's speech. This order of mastery is predicted by the short lag Voice Onset Time (VOT) values of Korean tense stops, as this is the earliest acquired phonation type across languages. However, the tense stop also has greater motor demands than the other two phonation types, given its pressed voice quality (negative H1-H2) and its relatively high f0 value at vowel onset, word-initially. In order to explain the observed order of mastery of Korean stops, we need a more sensitive quantitative model of the role of multiple acoustic parameters in production and perception. This study explores the relationship between native speakers' transcriptions/categorizations of children's stop productions and three acoustic characteristics (VOT, H1-H2 and f0). The results showed that the primary acoustic parameter that adult listeners used to differentiate tense vs. non-tense stops was VOT. Listeners used VOT and the additional acoustic parameter of f0 to differentiate lax vs. aspirated stops. Thus, the early acquisition of tense stops is explained both by their short-lag VOT values and the fact that children need to learn to control only a single acoustic parameter to produce them. Keywords tense stop; Voice Onset Time; fundamental frequency (f0); transcription accuracy; Korean stop laryngeal contrast; phonological acquisition IntroductionOne of the most noteworthy achievements of modern phonetics is our understanding of how phonation categories map onto voice onset time (VOT) cross-linguistically. VOT is a continuous measure of the temporal relationship between two acoustic events that signal the © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved * Corresponding author: ekong@wisc.edu, Tel: +1 608 262 6768, Fax: +1 608 263 0529 e-mail addresses of other authors mbeckman@ling.osu.edu; jedwards2@wisc.edu. Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. NIH Public AccessAuthor Manuscript J Phon. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2012 April 1. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript onset of vocal fold vibration and the release of the oral constriction, but the three qualitatively different VOT relationships of "before" versus "simultaneous with" versus "well after" capture the three most commonly attested phonation categories across languages. For example, in Lisker & Abramson's (1964) seminal investigation of stop VOT distributions across eleven languages, the two stop phonation types in Dutch, Hungarian, Spanish and Tamil could be ...

L2 Proficiency Effect on the Acoustic Cue-Weighting Pattern by Korean L2 Learners of English: Production and Perception of English Stops

“…In utilizing the two cues in perception, Schultz, Francis & Llanos (2012) have shown that English listeners put more perceptual weight on VOT than F0 in categorizing /b/ vs. /p/. Kong and Edwards (2011) provided additional supporting evidence drawn from eye-movement patterns to show that F0 was a secondary cue to English listeners since they relied on F0 only when VOT was ambiguous in differentiating /d/ from /t/.…”

“…Similarly, Kong, Beckman & Edwards (2011) showed that young adult listeners tended to rely more on F0 than VOT in differentiating the lax stop /t/ from the aspirated stop /t h / when attempting to categorize the stop consonants spoken by adults and children into one of the three stop phonation types.…”

High-toned [il] in Korean: Phonetics, intonational phonology, and sound change

“…The special linguistic behavior of people born around 1970s and later can also be observed in another sound change underway in Korean. Recent studies have found that people born around that time are responsible for the merger of Voice Onset Time (VOT) between lenis and aspirated stops (Silva 2006, Wright 2007, Kang and Guion 2008, Kong, Beckman, and Edwards 2011, Oh 2011, Kang 2014. As mentioned earlier, Korean has a three-way laryngeal contrast in obstruents: lenis, aspirated, and tense.…”

Tonogenesis in early Contemporary Seoul Korean: A longitudinal case study

“…The consonant-induced F0 difference extends far beyond the initial portion of the immediately following vowel indicating that the F0 perturbation is not an automatic consequence of physiological restrictions in laryngeal articulation (Jun, 1996;Kim, 2000;Silva, 2006). Recent perception studies also find that F0 is a crucial perceptual cue for stop distinction, for lenis-aspirated stops in particular (Kim et al, 2002;Kim, 2004;Lee and Jongman, 2011;Kong et al, 2011). So, this recent change in Seoul Korean is consistent with a process of tonogenesis, whereby consonant-induced F0 perturbation is exaggerated and reinterpreted by learners as a primary contrast, eventually replacing the original voicing or phonation contrast of consonants (Hombert et al, 1979;Kingston, 2011).…”

“…Studies on the stop production by children, ranging in age from 2 to 10 years, in Present Day Korean show that children produce a substantial overlap of VOT values between aspirated and lenis stops and more reliable difference in F0(Kim and Stoel-Gammon, 2009;Kong et al, 2011;Lee and Iverson, 2012) in line with younger adult speakers' speech pattern.…”