earticle

영어

Compared with stop counterparts, much less attention has been paid onto Korean affricates. Phonetic properties associated with affricates need to be further investigated, and there lies the issues concerning their exact place of articulation. In sequence of Kang (2006), the current study aims to provide another piece of evidence regarding phonetic characteristics of affricates when spoken and perceived relative to the palatal glide /j/ in a carried sentence of Korean. The results show that affricates are produced and perceived identically irrespective of the glide /j/ in presence. By contrast, alveolar stops and fricative exhibit consistent differences when followed by /j/ in acoustics and identification tests. The genuine alveolars differ significantly depending on the following /j/ in terms of their pitches at release, and F2 formant transitions at the offset of the preceding vowel and onset of the following one. The presence of /j/ at the post-alveolar context is identified correctly at the mean of 95 percent, while the affricates on focus make it almost impossible to separate it from the following glide, marking the overall correctness rate around 50%. The above phonetic results corroborate the general assumption that Korean affricates are not alveolars but post-alveolars.