Initial prominence and accent in Seoul Korean prosody

Abstract

This paper investigates two questions about the prosodic system of Seoul Korean—whether there is a word‐initial prominence, and whether a concurrent F0 peak is best seen as an optional pitch accent or as a boundary tone associated with some prosodic level. It analyzes the utterances of two speakers of the Seoul dialect. The durations of syllables and vowels placed in various positions within a sentence are compared. The two intonational analyses are tested by noting the position of the F0 peak, determining how consistently the peak appears, and noting the effects of pitch range variation. Results suggest: (1) that initial syllables of a word are consistently longer than medial syllables; (2) the position of the initial F0 peak is closely bound to the initial syllable of the utterance, but not of the word; and (3) the initial F0 peak appears in all tokens, except relatively short or fast tokens. This lack is shown to be due to tonal undershoot of a following low tone, as is apparent from strong and continuous relationships between height of pitch fall and rise and the temporal distance between the F0 peaks. These results suggest there is a word initial prominence in Seoul prosody, distinct from initial tones. The tones are best analyzed as boundary markers for some larger prosodic level, which become associated with initial syllables.