Does merger happen in the three-way contrast of Korean stops?

Abstract

Most previous studies of Korean stops have focused on limited acoustic cues, e.g., VOT and F0; few have considered voice quality and if any, only H1-H2 was mostly studied. Therefore, the question of the realization of three-way stop contrast (lenis, aspirated, and tense) in Korean is not settled. Given that the contrast is undergoing sound change (VOT of lenis is increasing), there arises the question whether other acoustic cues also change over time to keep the three-way contrast. Therefore, this study comprehensively investigates various acoustic measures of Korean stops from ten young Seoul speakers (five females; five males). Other than the distinctive low F0 after lenis stops and non-distinctive VOT between lenis and aspirated stops, our preliminary results show the the following. First, females and males exhibit significantly different acoustic realizations of three types of stops. Second, compared to the other two types, lenis stops are special in the way that they have larger variations of values in various acoustic measures (VOT, F0, H1*-H2*, H1*-A1*, H1*-A3*, etc.), which may account for the conflicting results in previous studies. Third, in the young generation, although VOT of lenis stops is merging toward aspirated stops, the vowel phonation after lenis stops is moving toward that after tense stops. This study suggests that the three-way stop contrast is maintained but with different acoustic realizations.