Preboundary lengthening of alveolar consonants: Acoustic and articulatory evidence from Seoul Korean

Preboundary lengthening of alveolar consonants: Acoustic and articulatory evidence from Seoul Korean

This study investigates the effects of prosodic boundaries on the acoustic and articulatory realization of alveolar consonants [n] and [t] in Seoul Korean. The ultrasound analysis shows that a higher prosodic boundary results in a greater magnitude of temporal and spatial expansion for the consonant gestures of Korean alveolars: when located in an IP-final compared to an AP-final position, [n, t] exhibit a significant lengthening, an advancement of the tongue root and lowering of the tongue body. We suggest that these acoustic and articulatory strategies variously employed among Korean speakers have a shared goal of expanding a pharyngeal cavity that often serves as the articulatory goal across world's languages when the target segment is temporally and/or spatially expanded. This study lends support to the cross-linguistic patterns of boundary-induced strengthening and contributes novel articulatory evidence demonstrating that consonantal gestures located at the right-edge are structurally conditioned by prosodic hierarchy in Korean. The findings of this study also illuminate how the preboundary lengthening of consonant gesture in Korean is articulatorily implemented.