On the Lenis Stop Consonants in Korean

Abstract

This paper explores the acoustic cues for differentiating the lenis stop consonants from the other two stop categories in Korean- i.e .. the tense and aspirated stop consonants. For this goal. I employ the Hl* - H2* measure to investigate post- release phonation modes of vowels following the three different stop consonants in question. In addition. I investigate the relationships among Hl *-H2*. VOT. and F0 measures. The phonetic findings under the study are: ( 1 ) three manner classes are clearly distinguished in the Hl *-H2* vs. VOT plot where the Hl* -H2 values are obtained at the initial portion of vowels: (2) the F0 values for the post- Ienis vowels are significantly lower than those of the other two classes throughout the first half of the vowels. Based on these phonetic findings. I argue for the need to incorporate the two features [stiff vocal folds] and [slack vocal folds) into the phonological treatments of Korean stops. while maintaining the two features [constricted glottis] and [spread glottis]. For the phonological representation of the lenis stops. I suggest that the lenis stop category should be assigned the [slack vocal folds] only.