Processing English [s] into Korean Alveolar Fricative in Word-initial Position

Abstract

The sound system in English has only one alveolar strident fricative [s] whereas Korean sound system has two types of alveolar fricative, lax [s] and tense [S*]. When English words with initial [s] are borrowed into Korean, one of the two alveolar fricatives is selected in the systematic pattern. This paper investigates whether the loanwords with initial alveolar fricative reflect the perceptual differences Korean speakers hear in English words and if so, what phonetic properties of the sounds, consonantal properties of [s] or vocalic properties of the vowel that follows [s], affect the Korean speakers' perception. The experiments utilize cross-spliced stimuli which combined consonant properties of a stimulus of English [s] that is frequently perceived as one type of alveolar fricative by Korean speakers with vocalic properties of a stimulus of English [s] frequently perceived as the other type of alveolar fricative. The findings suggest that both the consonantal and vocalic information of English words with initial [s] affect the perception of Korean speakers and that vocalic information like F0 that follows the initial [s] affects the perception more strongly than the consonantal information of [s]. Similar findings have been also argued for Korean stops in AP-initial position (cf. Kim et al., 2002).