The articulation of Korean coronal obstruents: data from heritage speakers and second language learners

Abstract

This study investigated where the consonantal constrictions take place when Korean coronal obstruents are articulated since there is disagreement over the place of articulation of these consonants. Unlike other studies in Korean phonetics, which focus on various acoustic features, the current study used static palatography (SPG) in the form of linguograms and palatograms to measure the linguo-palatal contact in the production of Korean coronal stops, affricates, and fricatives. Unlike many phonetic studies on the place of articulation of Korean obstruents, however, no significant difference was observed among phonemes in three-way contrast. Based on the results of Korean native speakers, the palatograms showed that the place of articulation of the Korean stops /t, th, t*/ is (denti-)alveolar, which is similar to that of English coronal stops. Unlike English affricates, which are palato-alveolar sounds, Korean coronal affricates /c, ch, c*/ are simply alveolar sounds. In addition, the linguograms showed that Korean native speakers use the tongue blade as well as the tongue tip to articulate Korean coronal stops and affricates while English speakers prefer the tongue tip for English coronal obstruents. As for the Korean coronal fricatives /s, s*/, the fricative gap is made between the alveolar ridge region and the tongue tip. This study also examined whether experience in the first language (L1) influences the pronunciation of coronal consonants in three groups of second language (L2) learners of Korean: non-heritage language learners at the first-year level (NHL1) and the second-year or higher level (NHL2), and heritage learners at the first-year level (HL1). First, Korean native speakers tend to make a smaller linguo-palatal contact than the three groups of L2 learners of Korean. Second, NHL1 learners were significantly different from NHL2 learners but were frequently similar to HL1 learners. Third, the movement of the tongue seems to be influenced in the L2 pronunciation. Compared to Korean native speakers, who tend to articulate Korean coronals as laminal or apico-laminal dentialveolar sounds, NHL1 learners and NHL2 learners preferred apical contacts for Korean stops and affricates, as they do in English.