15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-15)

Barcelona, Spain
August 3-9, 2003


An Optimality Theoretic Analysis of Tone Realization in Korean

Mira Oh

Chonnam National University, Korea

This paper investigates edge effects on the relationship between the underlying tonal sequence and its surface realization in the IP-final Accentual Phrase within the Optimality Theoretic framework. I will examine the way in which AP tones are aligned with their associated syllables in IP-final position. In Korean, Jun's (1996) 'see-saw effect' does not allow any two identical tones if they are marking a boundary of a prosodic group. A phonetic experiment conducted in this paper suggests that the 'see-saw effect' only apply to H boundary tones. Furthermore, it will be shown that the timing of tonal peaks is determined through the ranking of a set of violable constraints. That is to say, the AP tonal realization is achieved through the access to the global intonation in a complicated way.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Oh, Mira (2003): "An optimality theoretic analysis of tone realization in Korean", In ICPhS-15, 1253-1256.