Sound change and perceptual weight of acoustic correlates to Korean stops.
Kyoung-Ho Kang, Susan G. Guion · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2009
The Korean stop system is experiencing a sound change. Younger Korean speakers born in the 1970s or after produce aspirated and lenis stops differently from older speakers. Results from clear speech production experiments revealed differences in clear speech enhancement patterns. Older speakers enhanced voice onset time (VOT) difference, whereas younger speakers primarily enhanced F0 difference [K.-H. Kang and S. G. Guion, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 124, 3909–3917 (2008)]. These results indicate that older and younger speakers have different phonetic targets for the production of stops. The primary goal of the current study was to examine any perceptual differences related to the production differences. In order to assess the extent to which acoustic correlates to the stops contribute to the identification of the Korean stops, a perception experiment using resynthesized stimuli was conducted. Younger (n= 10, mean of 20.2 years old) and older listeners (n= 10, mean of 48.5 years old) participated in a stop identification task. The results suggested that F0 is a more weighted correlate than VOT for younger listeners for the distinction of the aspirated and lenis stops.