The effects of L1 AP-initial boundary tones and laryngeal features in Korean adaptation of Japanese plosives followed by a H or L vowel

What is it about?

The results have shown that, no matter whether they command a pitch-accent Kyungsang Korean or Seoul Korean which has no lexical pitch-accent, our subjects mostly categorized word-initial Japanese voiceless plosives as aspirated with the significant effect of H and word-medial voiceless plosives as either aspirated or fortis with no H/L effect. Their categorization of word-medial Japanese voiced plosives as lenis is not significantly affected by the H and L tonal difference, either, regardless of dialect differences. In their categorization of word-initial Japanese voiced plosives as lenis, however, the Seoul subjects favored L, and the Kyungsang subjects H.

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Why is it important?

This is the first cross-dialect study on the H and L tonal distinction in accordance with the three-way laryngeal contrast in plosives in Korean adaptation of Japanese plosives followed by a H or L vowel. In addition, the effect of L1 (i.e. Korean) AP-initial boundary tones as enhancement in the Seoul subjects’ categorization suggests that the prosodic unit of AP is also psychologically real in loanword adaptation, as in native word segmentation, and that the H/L tonal distinction is not underlyingly specified in aspirated and lenis plosives across the contexts in current Seoul Korean.