Articulatory correlates of /w/ in Korean

Abstract

The articulatory properties of /w/ have received relatively little attention compared to those of vowels and consonants. Although lip protrusion as well as dorsum raising and backing have generally been considered the major articulatory correlates of /w/, there is cross-linguistic evidence that the primary articulation of labiovelars, including /w/, is labial in some languages, while in other languages it is velar ([1]). Partly due to little articulatory data, there is little consensus on what articulatory features are involved in the production of /w/ in each language. This study used ultrasound to image tongue shapes for /w/ produced by three native Korean speakers. Also, a video camera was used to capture the movement of lips. The video data of movements of both tongue and lips were subjected to Optical Flow Analysis, a technique used to measure the magnitude of movement (MM) of objects in a video. The results show that there is prominent lip protrusion gestures for /w/ in Korean while there is little movement in tongue dorsum (the average MM of lip = 1.78; tongue = 0.48; t(86) = 4.02, p<0.001). This finding indicates that the glide /w/ in Korean involves labial movements only, contrary to the previous description of Korean glides [2], [3].