English Loanword Phonology in Korean

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to provide a fonnal account for the realization of English loan words in Korean. Our main concerns are the realization of laryngeal features of English obstruents in Korean, which can be summarized as follows. First, English aspirated onset obstruents are realized identically in Korean, e.g. /k"i/ -> [khi] 'key'. Second, voiceless unaspirated stops after /s/ in English are also realized as aspirated in Korean, e.g. /strcs/ ---> [sithircsiJ 'stress'. Third, English word-final unreleased stops become aspirated or unreleased ones in Korean, e.g. /rop/ -> [rophi] 'rope', /bUk/ -> [pUk'] 'book'. Fourth, English voiced obstruents in a word-initial position are consistently realized as voiceless unaspirated ones, e.g. / gcep/ -> [kcp'] 'gap'. Finally, English voiced obstruents in a word-final position become either voiceless or voiced ones in Korean, e.g. /khlAb/ -> [khillap'] 'club', /bed! -> [PEdi] 'bed'. Most previous researches on Korean loanword phonology (H. Kang 1996, O. Kang 1996) simply state that the Korean phoneme inventory automatically constrains these featural changes at the Perceptual Level, e.g. English voiceless unaspirated / p/ is matched with voiceless aspirated [ph] in Korean at the Perceptual Level. Only the vowel insertion is determined in the Operative Level in which an Optimality Theoretic grammar is effective. Thus, an intermediate level, i.e. Perceptual Level, is posited. The present study proposes a perception-based analysis of English loanwords in Korean within the framework of OptimaIity-Theory. The realization of laryngeal features of English obstruents in Korean is captured by the interaction of the markedness constraints prohibiting elements which require articulatory effort and faithfulness constraints requiring to preserve the input fonns. Specifically, faithfulness constraints such as MAX[ +long VOT] play a crucial role in capturing simijarities in release prominence of English and Korean stops and minimizing the differences between the phonetic output of English and its corresponding loanword form in Korean. We have shown that there are no intennediate levels between the input and its output in our analyses of English loan words.