Abstract
This study examines the Initial Sound Law in Korean within the framework of Optimality Theory. In Korean, some nasal and lateral sounds are avoided in word-initial position. Many rule-based or constraint-based theories (Davis and Shin 1999; Kim-Renaud 1974; Park 2010, etc.) have been proposed to account for this phenomenon. However, the rules or constraints given in the previous studies are highly language-specific, and markedness constraints play too strong a role in the constraint ranking while faithfulness constraints do not contribute significantly to the analysis. Instead, we propose more general, less language-specific constraints that are related to the sonority hierarchy: The sonority difference between C and V in word-initial position must be a minimum of 3. This constraint interacts with other general markedness and faithfulness constraints and succinctly explains the target phenomenon.
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