Individual Variability in the Production of /e/ and /ɛ/ in Yanbian Korean

Abstract

This study investigates the production of two vowels (/e/ and /ɛ/) in Yanbian Korean to determine whether Yanbian Korean speakers produce the two vowels similarly. This was achieved by directly comparing the vowel production of Yanbian Korean to the control data provided by speakers of Seoul Korean, a dialect where an unconditional merger of the two vowels is already complete. We hypothesized that speakers in close contact with Seoul Korean speakers tend to neutralize the distinction between the two vowels. Resutls from the two statistical analyses (Pillai and Bhattacharyya’s affinity) confirmed that Seoul Korean speakers display completely overlapping distribution of the vowels, whereas Yanbian Korean speakers showed greater individual variability when producing the same vowels. Some speakers, who had constant contact with Seoul Korean speakers at work or school, produced the target vowels in a similar fashion; however, others clearly produced them as different phonemes. The results suggest that direct or prolonged contact with or exposure to a dominant language may play a role in initiating the spread of the merger at an individual level.