earticle

영어

This study explores durational interaction of tautosyllabic consonants and vowels in English and Korean speech production and the role of vowel duration in Korean stop recognition. The effect of laryngeal contrasts in stops on the following vowel duration and the effect of the intrinsic vowel duration on the release duration of preceding stops are explored in different prosodic contexts: utterance-initial/medial, focal accented, and nonfocused. Results reveal the durational correlation between prevocalic consonants and following vowels, a trade-off relationship between VOTs and vowel durations. An asymmetry is found in CV interaction in that the effect of consonantal duration on vowel duration is greater. English, however, reveals increase in both consonant and vowel in the accented syllable rather independently, whereas the entire syllable unit shows accentual increase in Korean. The constancy of syllable duration is, therefore, found more strongly sustained in Korean and the difference is further discussed in terms of linguistic rhythm amongst the languages. The systematic variation of vowel duration due to different VOTs of prevocalic stops suggests vowel duration as a plausible perceptual cue in identifying the preceding stops in Korean. Identification tests on stop laryngeal categories in Korean were conducted with 12 native Korean listeners. The results show that listeners employ multiple cues of VOT, pitch, and vowel duration in identifying the stop categories, and that vowel duration is actively used, even with unambiguous F0. The effects of vowel duration were more obvious in tense and aspirated stops in the higher F0 ranges.