earticle

영어

This study examines effects of word-initial nasals on F0 of the following vowels in Daegu Korean (hereafter DK) by comparing nasal-initial disyllabic words with vowel-initial disyllabic words. This study shows that F0 values at the initial point of the first vowel (hereafter V1) are significantly lower in nasal-initial words than in vowel-initial words, regardless of lexical prosodic patterns. In addition, F0 values at F0 peak point and vowel final point are also lower in nasal-initial words than in vowel-initial words. This F0 lowering that lasts throughout the following vowel implies that DK is unlikely to be a tone language, and rather this phenomenon serves as evidence in favor of a pitch-accent language. Furthermore, this study reviews Jun et al. (2006) focusing on their discussions about the low boundary tone at the beginning of the words. The F0 lowering by word-initial nasals found in the current study suggests that their results seemed to be affected by initial segments and the different initial segments would have resulted in different results.