final project ling

7/28/2019 Final Project Ling

1/11

Megan BarnesFinal Project06/11/2013

1. The Language and Language ConsultantThe 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.


2/11


2. VowelsKorean Vowel Chart:

Main Vowel Contrasts:

Roundedness Contrasts:

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

unrounded vowels.


3/11


Spectrograms of the Vowels:

[ip] mouth

[k] and

[k!] dog

Time (s)

193.1 193.50

5000

Frequency(Hz)

193.072405 193.463745

22minsu

Time (s)

12.9 13.320

5000

Frequency(Hz)

12.9036443 13.3221995

0602minsu

Time (s)

10.6 110

5000

Frequency(Hz)

10.5959526 11.0022543

0602minsu


4/11


[kan] liver

[pj"l] star

[ot] clothing

Time (s)

41.14 41.550

5000

Frequency

(Hz)

41.141807 41.5450813

0602minsu

Time (s)41.14 41.550

5000

Frequency(Hz)

41.141807 41.54508130602minsu

Time (s)

77.59 77.940

5000

Frequency(Hz)

77.592506 77.9358261

15minsu


5/11


[kun] soldier/military

[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 onspectrograms)

Time (s)

15.87 16.370

5000

Frequency

(Hz)

15.8681899 16.3698264

0602minsu

Time (s)

19.49 19.970

5000

Frequency(Hz)

19.4873603 19.9673545

0602minsu

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

050010001500200025003000

i

a

u

^

o


6/11


3. ConsonantsWord-initial Consonants:

Place ->Manner

Bilabial Alveolar Post-

alveolar

Velar Glottal

Stop p, p , p t, t , t t, th, t k, k , k

Fricative s, s h

Nasal m n

Flap

Approximant j

(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 Hornpul Firep ul Grasskan Liverkan peeledk an Bin

tal Moontal Daughtert al Maskta Ruler

ta Salty

tha Cars! Birds! Strongh! Yearmul Waternuna Older sister

j"l Ten

In this table, consonants with certain similar characteristics (place or manner ofarticulations) are placed in similar environments (typically next to similar vowels asall 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 contrastingnasals or stops, approximants before stops, and voiceless stops with other voicelessstops.


7/11


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 phonemesthat would be hard for a speaker of some other languages to distinguish (manylanguages contain the three as allophones of the plain voiceless stop). Theirspectrograms and intensity charts (respectively) vary as follows:

[kan] liver

Time (s)

37.7 38.380

5000

Frequency(Hz)

37.7037761 38.3750830602minsu

Time (s)

37.54 38.4150

100

Intensity(dB)

38.4103838

0602minsu

Very small onset timefor [k]

Intensity peaking in

the middle of theword around thevowel


8/11


[kan] peeled

Time (s)

40.91 41.70

5000

Frequency(Hz)

40.9104035 41.7048017

0602minsu

Time (s)

40.91 41.750

100

Intensity(dB)

40.9104035 41.7048017

0602minsu

Time (s)

43.8 44.260

5000

Frequency(Hz)

43.8037141 44.2570614

0602minsu

Similarly short onsettime for [k]

Intensity peakingat the beginningof the word(correlating with[k])

Large period ofnoise before onsetof vowel


9/11


[khan] bin

As the spectrograms and intensity charts show, [k] and [k] both have short vowelonset time, and [kh] varies by having a much longer period of noise before vowelonset. 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 onthe consonant and a larger on on the vowel. These differences constitute a contrastin Korean.

4. ProsodyVowel length:

There seems to be a prosodic phenomenon in the stress variation in twosyllable words. Most of the two-syllable words elicited followed a stressed-unstressed pattern. After asking the speaker, not following this pattern vs. followingit does not appear to be contrastive, but is salient nonetheless.

For example:

[tada] to burnThis intensity chart shows two peaks corresponding to identical vowels. Thedifference is that the first peak is higher, as the first syllable in the word is stressedand has greater intensity.

Time (s)43.8 44.26

50

100

Inte

nsity(dB)

43.8037141 44.25706140602minsu

Time (s)71.27 71.79

50

100

Intensity(dB)

71.265905615minsu

Two peaks inintensity. Thesmallercorrelating with[kh] and the largercorrelating withthe vowel


10/11


11/11


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 themorpheme to indicate plurality fluctuates between [-t^l] and [-d^l}. From this wecan glean that [t] and [d] are allophones of the same phoneme. While both occurwithin 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 thisprocess 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 ]

final project ling

Documents