Acoustic Features in the Manner Differentiation of Korean Stop Consonants

Abstract

In Korean, a three-way distinction in both the manner and place of articulation serves to differentiate nine stop-consonant phonemes: namely, the aspirated stops /ph/, /th/, and /kh/; the lenis stops /p/, /t/, and /k/; and the fortis stops /P/, /T/, and /K/. While the acoustic features correlated with place of articulation have been extensively studied, those involving the three-way manner differentiation of Korean stops have been inadequate, including the recent claim that the voice onset time is a sufficient cue for making these manner distinctions. The results of our spectrographic studies, a series of tape-cutting and -splicing experiments, and listening tests indicate that two acoustic factors are necessary to make the three-way manner differentiation: (1) the timing of the voicing onset that divides the stop series into two classes—aspirated stops (/ph/, /th/, /kh/) and unaspirated stops (/p/, /t/, /k/, /P/, /T/, /K/); and (2) the quality of the voicing onset that differentiates the lenis stops from the fortis stops.