Multinomial regression modeling of vowel insertion patterns: adaptation of coda stops from English to Korean

Abstract

Abstract When an English word ending in a stop is adapted to Korean, a vowel is variably inserted after the final stop. Vowel insertion in this position is surprising because voiceless stops are permissible in coda position in Korean and it is not motivated by Korean native phonology. This study examines five factors that have been hypothesized to affect the likelihood of vowel insertion, i.e., tenseness of the pre-final vowel, voicing and place of the English final stop, word size and final stress. These possibilities were tested using a corpus of Korean loanwords whose source word ends in a stop. Patterns of vowel insertion were classified as no vowel insertion, vowel insertion, or optional vowel insertion, and analyzed using multinomial regression modeling. The results confirmed that all the relevant factors significantly increased the likelihood of vowel insertion and optional vowel insertion patterns relative to no vowel insertion patterns compared with the reference condition rates. These findings suggest that particular features indeed impact production patterns in loanword phonology. My Results support the need for further research into how other possible auditory factors such as stop release may shape speech perception in loanword adaptation.