Segmental Acoustic Correlates Associated with the Korean Lenis Stops

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate which acoustic correlates to stop feature distinction were realized due to the presence of a segmentation boundary and how semantic focus information contributed to acoustic correlates associated with segmental units. A production study was conducted using Korean lenis stops. The closure durations and VOTs of lenis stops were longer when they were in boundary-initial positions than when they were in boundary-internal positions. The VOTs became longer as the position of words in the structural hierarchy of sentences grew higher. The F0s of vowels were lower when they followed boundary-initial lenis stops than when they followed boundary-internal lenis stops. The semantic focus information resulted in longer VOTs of initial lenis stops and lower F0s in vowels following initial lenis stops. These results indicated that talkers reliably indicated the onset of words and phrases in the closure durations and the VOTs of lenis stops and the F0s of their following vowels.