Gender effect on the use of phonetic cues for stops in the Kyungsang dialect

Abstract

The present study aimed to examine whether there was a gender effect on the phonetic properties of Korean stops in the Kyungsang dialect and investigate how the genders used the acoustic cues across different prosodic positions and focus conditions. Voice onset time, the peak of fundamental frequency, and vowel duration were compared in initial and medial positions of IP and under focused and unfocused conditions. In general, the VOT values of lenis and aspirated stops were shown to be longer for Kyungsang male speakers than for female speakers. The vowel duration, F0 and semitones of the two stops were greater for the female speakers than for the male speakers, and the systematic difference of semitones depending on different prosodic conditions was only found in the speech of the female speakers. While the Kyungsang male speakers made use of VOT to distinguish stop categories, the Kyungsang female speakers put more weight on the use of F0 to contrast the stops across the different prosodic conditions.