Phonological Status of Korean /w/: Based on the Perception Test

Abstract

The sound /w/ has been traditionally regarded as an independent segment in Korean regardless of the phonological contexts in which it occurs. There have been, however, some questions regarding whether it is an independent phoneme in /CwV/context (cf. Kang 2006). The present pilot study examined how Korean /w/ is realized in /S*wV/ context by performing some perception tests. Our assumption was that if Korean /w/ is a part of the preceding complex consonant like /Cw/, it should be more or less uniformly articulated and perceived as such. If /w/ is an independent segment, it will be realized with speaker variability. Experiments I and II examined the identification rates as “labialized” of the spliced original stimuli of /S*-V/ and /Sw*-wV/, and the cross-spliced stimuli /Sw*-V/ and /S*-wV/. The results showed that round qualities of /w/ are perceived at significantly different temporal point with speaker and context variability. We therefore conclude that /w/ in /S*wV/ context is an independent segment, not a part of the preceding segment. Full-scale examination of the production test in the future should be performed to verify the conclusion we suggested in this paper.