The phonetics and phonology of onset-sensitive accentuation of novel words in North Kyungsang Korean

Abstract

Aspirated onset consonants are not necessarily associated with a high tone pitch accent in North Kyungsang Korean although vowels following aspirated obstruent consonants tend to have higher F0 than those following other consonants in both standard Korean and Kyungsang dialects. However, this study presents evidence that aspiration plays a role in the assignment of a pitch accent pattern to novel words. This study shows that NKK accentuation of new words is not random but rather constrained: either by phonetics-based or phonologically-grounded constraints. This study suggests that even though the effect of aspiration on accentuation is not categorical, the phonetic effect was important enough to at least serve as a factor in deriving variation in accent patterns in newly adopted words.