Speaker and Vowel Variability in Manner of Fricatives and Affricates in Korean

This study explores what acoustic cues, based on the manner of articulation, distinguish Korean fricatives and afficates in Korean by measuring frication duration, rise time, and amplitude rise slope, and by considering how these acoustic cues vary as a function of consonant category, dialect, gender, vowel context and phonation types. The study results show that three acoustic parameters differ in the following vowel context /i/, /a/, and /u/. However, no main effects of dialect or gender were found on frication duration, rise time, and amplitude rise slope. As for tense-lax contrast, affricates and fricatives both employ frication duration as a cue differentiating tense from lax consonants. Furthermore, rise time and amplitude rise slope were identified as cues for tenseness, for fricatives and affricates, respectively.