Linguistic and social effects on perceptions of voice onset time in Korean stops

Abstract

This paper investigates effects of linguistic and social factors on phoneme categorization of Seoul Korean stops. In an investigation of VOT in aspirated versus lenis stops of Korean, Oh (2011) reports VOT length in aspirated stops to be conditioned both linguistically and socially: bilabial stops exhibit shorter VOT than velars, following /a/ conditions shorter VOT than /i/, and female speakers exhibit shorter VOT than males. 10 native speakers of Seoul Korean (5 men, 5 women) were recorded producing bilabial and velar stops in the frame /CVn/. Recordings were manipulated to create a 10-step continuum of VOT length for each speaker, from 25ms to 115ms. 30 native speakers of Seoul Korean listened to each of these manipulated stimuli for every speaker and categorized them as containing either aspirated or lenis stops. Listeners were more likely to categorize a given VOT as aspirated when it occurred in a bilabial stop as opposed to a velar stop, when it preceded /a/ as opposed to /i/, and when it was produced by a female as opposed to a male. Results indicate that speakers exhibit knowledge of production patterns when categorizing phonemes, drawing upon both linguistic and social information.