Tensification Revisited

Abstract

It seems that the toyn soli phenomenon or tensification in Korean phonology has been satisfactorily dealt with neither in the generative, nor even in the descriptive terms. Relating to the problem of tensification, two crucial questions seem to be raised, which are actually not separate, but interrelated. The one is how to formalize the phenomenon, and the other is to explicate the unpredictable alternation of voicing and tensing of the five voiceless obstruents /p, t, c, k, s/ in the same environment. Both questions will not be positively solved in the present study. Nor an ordered set of rules will be proposed that can generate either voiced or tensified obstruents , in the same immediate phonetic environment in a regular and predictable way, since the task is intractable at the present stage of research. My concern in this study will be by and large restricted to showing what rules are involved in tensification which occurs in various environments, and how the underlying representations are converted into the surface phonetic representations. However, an ade quate explanation of the first question, I believe and hope, may shed light on the solution to the persistent problem of the unpredictable alternation between voicing and tensing.