Abstract
This study is to argue that the choice between aspiration and glottalization of /t/ by speakers in the same phonological environment can be influenced by differences in the ranking of feature preservation constraints. Besides, I propose that if Korean learners of English tend to produce aspiration in environments where glottalization are prevalent, it results from applying the constraint favoring listener's perceptive ease being ranked higher than that favoring speaker's articulatory ease. Allophones of /t/ can vary even among native speakers due to different sociolinguistic factors. When Korean learners of English apply the constraint of [aspirated] feature preservation at a high ranking, with the intention of enhancing listener's perception, pronunciation errors may occur. Also, if they rank high the constraint for avoiding consonant cluster, which is not allowed in Korean language, they can produce awkward pronunciation. Therefore, by analyzing aspiration and glottalization of /t/ through Optimality Theory, this paper aims to demonstrate that the reason English /t/ exhibits more phonological variants and allophones is attributed to the low feature preservation it holds.
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