파슈토어 배경 오 남매의 한국어 어두 폐쇄음 산출 변이

Variation in the production of Korean word-initial stop sounds in five siblings from Pashto backgrounds: VOT and periodicity in release interval

The present study measured VOT and following vowel F0 of word-initial stop sounds of five sibling Korean speakers from a Pashtun background and found periodicity in the interval between release and vowel onset, which was quantified by HNR. The informants moved altogether to Korea at varying ages, and have now resided in the country for a period of 11 years. This case provides an opportunity to investigate the critical period hypothesis that biological age of onset decides success in acquiring new phonemes in new language. The findings revealed that all informants were able to distinguish between the different MOA pairs of Korean stop sounds, making it difficult to identify significant differences among informants based on their age of learning. However, a notable characteristic was found in one informant who used VOT and the following vowel F0 in a unique, non-typical manner to distinguish the pairs more efficiently. Furthermore, The analysis discovered periodicity and sonority in their stop sounds, features not typically found in Korean, which is an aspirating language. The periodicity in the intervals between release and vowel onset, which is a characteristic of breathy voiced, can be inferred as a result of the phonetic transfer of [voicing] from their true voicing language backgrounds to Korean stop sounds. This study aimed to shed light on word-initial stop sounds utterances and to demonstrate it not as a learner’s error but a way of balancing intelligibility and specificity in the context of multilingual society.