Megan Barnes Final Project 06/11/2013

1. The Language and Language Consultant The Korean language is spoken throughout North and South Korea as their official language, as well as in the Yanbian province of China as one of its official languages. In total, Korean has 78 million speakers, worldwide. Regional dialectic differences occur throughout Korea, with the most pronounced difference being between northern and southern dialects of Korean. These differences occur between pronunciation, spelling, grammar, and vocabulary. Korean is considered to be a language isolate, though some speculations propose its membership in the Altaic language family. School children in South Korea learn English, causing a high number of bilingual individuals, though most do not speak the dominant surrounding languages (Chinese and Japanese).

Min Su, a native speaker of Korean, was born and raised in Mexico. His parents emigrated from Korea before he was born, and he and his brother were born in Mexico. He now speaks Korean, Spanish, and English. He considers himself most fluent in Spanish, but is equally comfortable with Korean and still speaks Korean exclusively with his family. The Korean he has been exposed to comes mostly from his parents, but he visits Korea regularly and has encountered a variety of Korean dialects.

Megan Barnes Final Project 06/11/2013

2. Vowels Korean Vowel Chart:

Main Vowel Contrasts:

Roundedness Contrasts:

Six of Koreans eight simple vowels appear in contrasting distribution in the first table. A ninth vowel exists in the written language, [e], but there is no audible difference between [e] and [!], according to the speaker. The second table shows, most notably, minimal pairs that demonstrate how rounded vowels contrast with unrounded vowels.

Megan Barnes Final Project 06/11/2013

Spectrograms of the Vowels:

22minsu 193.072405 5000 193.463745

Frequency (Hz) 0 193.1 Time (s)

193.5

[ip] mouth

0602minsu 12.9036443 5000 13.3221995

Frequency (Hz) 0 12.9 Time (s)

13.32

[k] and
11.0022543

0602minsu 10.5959526 5000

Frequency (Hz) 0 10.6 Time (s)

11

[k!] dog

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0602minsu 41.141807 5000 41.5450813

Frequency (Hz) 0 41.14 Time (s)

41.55

[kan] liver

0602minsu 41.141807 5000 41.5450813

Frequency (Hz) 0 41.14 Time (s)

41.55

[pj"l] star

15minsu 77.592506 5000 77.9358261

Frequency (Hz) 0 77.59 Time (s)

77.94

[ot] clothing

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0602minsu 15.8681899 5000 16.3698264

Frequency (Hz) 0 15.87 Time (s)

16.37

[kun] soldier/military

0602minsu 19.4873603 5000 19.9673545

Frequency (Hz) 0 19.49 Time (s)

19.97

[kn] weight measure

Vowels Charted by Formant Frequency: (x-axis being F2-F1 in Hz and y-axis being F1 in Hz, all estimations from values on spectrograms)
3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 0

i u

100 200 300 400

o a ^
500 600

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3. Consonants Word-initial Consonants: Place -> Manner Stop Fricative Nasal Flap Approximant j m Bilabial Alveolar Postalveolar p, ph, p t, th, t s, s n
h t, th, t k, k , k

Velar

Glottal

(in this chart and henceforth in this paper, tenseness of a consonant is denoted by [], the proper diacritic would be two vertical lines beneath the consonant) (Rough) Minimal pairs showing contrastive distribution of word-initial consonants: pul pul phul kan kan khan tal tal thal ta ta tha s! s! h! mul nuna j" l Horn Fire Grass Liver peeled Bin Moon Daughter Mask Ruler Salty Car Bird Strong Year Water Older sister Ten

In this table, consonants with certain similar characteristics (place or manner of articulations) are placed in similar environments (typically next to similar vowels as all are word-initial) in order to show that they contrast as phonemes of Korean. Consonant clusters that arise in collected data consist of nasals before contrasting nasals or stops, approximants before stops, and voiceless stops with other voiceless stops.

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An interesting set of contrastive consonants is the variation on the voiceless stop. The plain, tense, and aspirated versions of these stops form three separate phonemes that would be hard for a speaker of some other languages to distinguish (many languages contain the three as allophones of the plain voiceless stop). Their spectrograms and intensity charts (respectively) vary as follows:
0602minsu 37.7037761 5000 38.3750839

Frequency (Hz)

Very small onset time for [k]

0 37.7 Time (s)
0602minsu 100 38.4103838

38.38

Intensity (dB)

Intensity peaking in the middle of the word around the vowel

50 37.54 Time (s)

38.41

[kan] liver

Megan Barnes Final Project 06/11/2013

0602minsu 40.9104035 5000 41.7048017

Frequency (Hz)

Similarly short onset time for [k]

0 40.91 Time (s) 0602minsu 40.9104035 100

41.7

41.7048017

Intensity peaking at the beginning of the word (correlating with [k])

Intensity (dB) 50 40.91 Time (s)

41.7

[kan] peeled
0602minsu 43.8037141 5000 44.2570614

Frequency (Hz)

Large period of noise before onset of vowel

0 43.8 Time (s)

44.26

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0602minsu 43.8037141 100 44.2570614

Two peaks in intensity. The smaller correlating with [kh] and the larger correlating with the vowel

Intensity (dB) 50 43.8 Time (s)

44.26

[k an] bin As the spectrograms and intensity charts show, [k] and [k] both have short vowel onset time, and [kh] varies by having a much longer period of noise before vowel onset. All three vary in intensity forms, with [kan] finding its peak on the vowel, [kan] finding its peak on the initial consonant, and [khan] having two peaks, one on the consonant and a larger on on the vowel. These differences constitute a contrast in Korean. 4. Prosody Vowel length: There seems to be a prosodic phenomenon in the stress variation in two syllable words. Most of the two-syllable words elicited followed a stressedunstressed pattern. After asking the speaker, not following this pattern vs. following it does not appear to be contrastive, but is salient nonetheless. For example:
15minsu 71.2659056 100

Intensity (dB) 50 71.27

[tada] to burn This intensity chart shows two peaks corresponding to identical vowels. The difference is that the first peak is higher, as the first syllable in the word is stressed and has greater intensity.
Time (s)

71.79

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V-V Syllables vs. Diphthongs While also not a contrastive feature as the two forms appear in complementary distribution, two vowels next to each other in Korean can form either two syllables, or one diphthong. For example:
15minsu 184.19291 5000 184.905144

Frequency (Hz) 0 184.2 Time (s)

184.9

[turioum] fear

[i] [o] [u] Though [i], [o], and [u] all appear without a consonant to break them up, each gets to be the nucleus of a separate syllable (as evidenced by the length that makes each distinguishable). [i], in particular, is very visible in respect to length.
15minsu 5000 54.7365616

Frequency (Hz) 0 54.2 Time (s)

54.87

[pj^] - bone [i] [^] In this case, the [i] and [^] combination causes the [i] value to be incredibly short, putting the emphasis on the glide between the [i] and [^], which causes [i^] to surface as a [j^] diphthong. (All recordings of the words these charts refer to are labeled by their English gloss)

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5. Phonology

One of many phonological processes going on in Korean is a stop-voicing rule. From the data above based on the pluralization of nouns, it is clear that the morpheme to indicate plurality fluctuates between [-t^l] and [-d^l}. From this we can glean that [t] and [d] are allophones of the same phoneme. While both occur within words, [t] is the only allophone that occurs at word boundaries ([tomul] and [ot], for example). This is a good indication that [t] is the underlying phoneme. Then, we can see that [t] becomes voiced between sonorant segments (vowels, nasals, [l] and [r]). Referring to the extension of the table, we can see that this process also happens to the other stops in the phonological inventory ([k], [tS], and [p]). The rule then looks as such: Voicing: C [-cont -> C [+voice] / [+son] __ [+son} -son ]