Supralaryngeal implementation of length and laryngeal contrasts in Japanese and Korean

要旨

Abstract This article investigates supralaryngeal characteristics of Japanese and Korean length and laryngeal contrasts in stops and affricates. Electropalatography data collected from five Japanese and five Korean speakers revealed similar differences among the consonants in the degree of linguopalatal contact and duration of the closure. Japanese (voiceless) geminate and Korean fortis obstruents were most constricted and had the longest duration (although considerably longer in Japanese). Japanese voiced and Korean lenis obstruents were least constricted and had the shortest duration. Japanese voiceless (singleton) and Korean aspirated obstruents showed intermediate degree of contact and duration. Both stops and affricates showed a positive correlation between degree of contact and duration. The results show that the two very different sets of phonological contrasts are implemented similarly at the supralaryngeal level. These cross-language similarities and cross-category differences are proposed to result from the application of independently-motivated phonetic enhancement rules to distinct phonological representations of laryngeal/length contrasts in the two languages.

主題