The nominal pitch accent system of South Kyungsang Korean

Abstract

The current paper investigates the nominal pitch accent system in South Kyungsang Korean through an acoustic study and presents a phonological analysis for the system based on the acoustic results. The data were collected from four male South Kyungsang speakers by recording monosyllabic and disyllabic nouns with various types of suffixes. The pitch results confirmed the accent distinctions reported in earlier works on the language, and we found that suffixes may also bear contrastive accent. We analyzed the pitch accent system as having three pre-linked accents and one default accent. Two of the pre-linked accents count from the left and are linked to the initial and peninitial moras of the root, respectively, and both spread one mora to the right. The other pre-linked accent counts from the right (penult) and does not spread. This analysis fits in with the culminative tone typology established in Evans (Types of tonal culminativity in language of Sichuan and elsewhere, 2009). An Optimality Theoretic analysis that derives the surface tone patterns for both the default and pre-linked accents is proposed, and the proposal is compared with earlier analyses of pitch accents in North and South Kyungsang Korean.