Acoustic matching and phonotactic expectations in the adaptation of English /s/ into Korean

Acoustic matching and phonotactic expectations in the adaptation of English /s/ into Korean

This study aims to demonstrate that the adaptation of loanwords cannot be solely explained by speech perception. Specifically, it focuses on the adaptation of the English /s/ sound into Korean. In English, a singleton /s/ is loaned as tense [s*], while a preconsonantal /s/ is adapted as lenis [s] in Korean. Kim and Curtis (2002) and Kang (2008) provided an acoustic cue-based analysis for the adaptation of English /s/, considering duration and voice quality, respectively. To investigate the perception of English /s/ by Korean listeners, we conducted a perception experiment. We examined the impact of prosodic factors, such as domain-edge position and lexical stress, on the perception of /s/. Our findings revealed diverse perception patterns depending on stress and position within a word. Specifically, /s/ in a stressed syllable and /s/ in a word-edge position were more likely to be perceived as tense [s*]. Contrary to Kim and Curtis (2002), the duration of English /s/ alone was insufficient to explain perception patterns. Based on our varied perception patterns, we argue that categorical adaptation of the singleton /s/ as tense [s*] and the preconsonantal /s/ as lenis [s] does not solely reflect speech perception. Instead, we propose that loanword adaptation is a process driven by top-down/phonotactic expectations and acoustic matching, with the goal of maximizing perceptual similarity between the source word and the loanword. This is consistent with the findings of Daland et al. (2019).