New effects of laryngeal configurations on f0: Voiceless stops in Korean

Abstract

Korean has three sets of voiceless stops in word-initial position which are distinctive from one another in terms of laryngeal adjustments: lenis unaspirated, fortis unaspirated, and aspirated [P. Ladefoged and I. Maddiedson, 47–101 (1996)]. It has been observed that, in Standard Korean, the aspirated stops have higher f0 value than the fortis stops, while both stops have higher f0 value than the lenis stops [D. Silva, 11–34 (1998)]. It could be argued that this indicates a universal correspondence between laryngeal configurations for voicing and pitch—at least within Korean. However, the current paper reveals a different observation. In South Kyengsang dialect in Korean, little difference is found in the f0 value between the aspirated and the fortis stops, while the f0 of the lenis stops is relatively lower, similar to Silva’s (1998) finding. A total of 600 tokens, by five speakers, were recorded and digitized, then analyzed using Macquirer software for pitch tracking. The results show that the f0 following the fortis stops are consistently higher than that of Standard Korean, regardless of the place of articulation, and the higher f0 of the fortis stops patterns with the lower f0 of the lenis stops among speakers.