English Unaspirated Stops in the Consonant Clusters /s + p t k/ Produced by Native Korean Speakers: An Acoustic Analysis of Voice Onset Time

Abstract

The present study investigates native Korean speakers production of English unaspirated stops in the consonant clusters /s + p t k/. It is notable that the phonemic systems in English and Korean are different from each other; that is, while English is a two-category language of which voiceless stops have aspirated and unaspirated allophones, the distinction depending on aspiration is not found in English words borrowed into Korean. Instead, English unaspirated stops as well as aspirated stops are adopted as aspirated stops in Korean. Therefore, it is hypothesized, in this paper, that native speakers of Korean tend to be influenced by their native language when producing English unaspirated stops. A production experiment was conducted in order to compare the voice onset time values of each stop produced by native speakers of English and Korean. The results show that the values of native Korean speakers are higher than those of native English speakers, which means that Korean speakers produce stops in the consonant clusters /s + p t k/ as if they were aspirated stops. It also turned out that the English proficiency level of native Korean speakers have an effect on the voice onset time values.