A Reanalysis of Korean Stop Phonemes

The purpose of this thesis is to make a phonemic analysis of the Korean stops on the basis of the idea that word-medial, intervocalic allophones should be selected as the principal allophones of Korean stop phonemes. The results of the investigations of this thesis show that native speakers of Korean intuitively know that the lax stops of their language are not voiceless but voiced. This means that they think the voicing feature of medial lax stops is more important than the slight aspiration feature of the initial lax stops. Moreover, some phonological and historical linguistic phenomena also indicate that the intervocalic consonants can be characterized as the ‘basic unmarked” sounds in Korean. Consequently, the selection of the intervocalic (b, d, g) as principal allophones of the lax stop phonemes in Korean is most reasonable and appropriate. Thus. the feature of “voicing” should be considered one of the primary distinctive features, and the Korean lax stops in particular should be defined as voiced sounds.

Thesis Author: Park, Seung-Hee

Year Completed: 1992

Thesis Chair: John S. Robertson

Thesis Award: Outstanding Thesis