Abstract
Most discussions of the Korean liquid phoneme /l/ identify two allophones: a flap, [ɾ], in the onset of syllables, and an alveolar lateral approximant syllable-finally and in geminates. However, some research paints a more complex picture indicating a wide range of interspeaker variation for the precise articulatory realization of these allophones. The present research finds that in regards to the tap and laterals realizations previous descriptions are largely correct. It also affirms through analysis of F2 values that previous findings showing that the Korean lateral is palatalized before high front vocoids are correct. Most importantly, it analyzes F3 values to show that the retroflex variant is particularly prevalent near pauses, suggesting that retroflexion may be a secondary cue to prosodic boundaries.
Highlights
The current research largely confirms previous findings about the tap/lateral distribution of the Korean liquid. It suggests that the retroflex lateral may be a more widespread and prominent realization of the lateral than previously suggested
The fact that the retroflex occurs in over half of pre-pausal liquids suggests that a re-evaluation of the phonology of the Korean liquid is warranted
Retroflexion may be of interest from a language variation perspective, given that there was a great deal of variation from speaker to speaker in this study, with percentages of variation in the utterance-final particle /kʌl/ ranging from 2.5% to 100%
Summary
Korean has a single phonemic liquid /l/, that is usually described as having two allophones Most commonly it is realized syllable-initially as a flap, [ɾ], and syllable- and in geminates as an alveolar lateral approximant, [l], with variable behavior before /h/, being realized as [ɾ] when /h/ is elided and [l] when it is not (Sohn 1999; Sin, Kaier & Cha 2012; Kim 2015; Sin 2015). Tabain et al (2016) found that the apical retroflex /ɭ/ was associated with a lower F3 and F4 than the other laterals (/l /, /l/, and /ʎ/) in the languages under study. The current study aims to examine the following research questions: Does the articulation of the Korean liquid phoneme match previous descriptions?
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