Tonal alignment with articulatory gestures in South Kyungsang Korean

Abstract

The present study examines how the tone gesture is coordinated with the constriction gestures of the consonant and the vowel in South Kyungsang Korean (SKK), a language with a lexical pitch accent system and how the coordination between the tone and the constriction gestures is related to the tone-bearing ability of SKK. To answer these questions, articulatory and acoustic data were collected from eleven speakers with an Electromagnetic Articulography (EMA). The results of the alignment patterns and the intergestural timing of the tone and the constriction gestures showed that the onset C and the V gestures had an in-phase relationship, while the H tone gesture had an anti-phase relationship with the onset C and the V gestures, respectively. Importantly, the H tone gesture appeared to be coordinated with the coda C gesture. The intergestural stability of these gestures also suggested that these coordination patterns may be specified in the gestural coordination system of SKK to some extent. In addition, the tonal realization was conditioned by the segmental makeup of the coda (obstruent versus sonorant) as the tone-bearing ability is related to the sonorous property of the rime in a syllable. These results of the coordination patterns in SKK were compared with the coordination patterns found in a tonal language, Mandarin Chinese. While the results imply a possible difference in tone-gesture alignment between a pitch-accent language and a tone language, it remains to be seen whether it is generalizable across languages.