Aerodynamic and laryngeal study of Korean obstruents

Abstract

The stops, fricatives, and affricates of Korean can be categorized into three groups, i.e., the slightly aspirated group, the unaspirated tense group, and the heavily aspirated group. All the Korean obstruents are voiceless except for the slightly aspirated ones that become voiced when they occur in intervocalic position. This paper examines aerodynamic aspects and glottal activity during in the production of the Korean obstruents. The linguistic material consisted of words with all the obstruents in word-initial and word-medial positions. One female and three male native speakers of Korean served as subjects. The oral airflow signal was recorded and inverse filtered to obtain an estimate of the glottal pulse. The aerodynamic patterns at the transitions from vowel to obstruent and from obstruent to vowel were analyzed. Laryngeal activity was recorded using transillumination. Results suggest that for Korean initial obstruents, the size of the glottal opening and its coordination with supralaryngeal events combine to determine the VOT. Following the release of the obstruents, the pattern of airflow differed between the three groups with the heavily aspirated group showing the highest flow rates and the unaspirated tense group the lowest rates. [Work supported by a Fulbright Grant.] a)Also at Seoul National Univ.