Perceptual cues in Korean fricatives

Abstract

The current study explores the production and perception of two Korean fricatives - fortis [s’] and non-fortis (plain) [s]. Production data from 10 speakers were examined to investigate the acoustic cues that distinguish the two fricatives in different vowel contexts (high vowel /i/ vs. low vowel /a/). Measures included rise time, intensity, center of gravity (COG), F0, H1-H2, and CPP, as well as frication, aspiration, and subsequent vowel duration. COG and vowel duration consistently distinguished the two fricatives; additional cues varied across vowel contexts. For the /i/ context, intensity and F0 differed across the fricatives; for the /a/ context, rise time, H1-H2 and CPP differed across the fricatives. Four perceptual identification experiments were conducted with sixty native Korean listeners. Experiment 1 established that listeners can distinguish the two fricatives in intact natural syllables. In Experiments 2 and 3, listeners heard only the excised consonantal or vocalic segment. For the /a/ con...