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Variation and change in the nominal pitch-accent system of South Kyungsang Korean*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 October 2016

Hyunjung Lee*
Affiliation:
Kyungnam University and University of Kansas
Allard Jongman*
Affiliation:
University of Kansas
Jie Zhang*
Affiliation:
University of Kansas

Abstract

This paper considers whether the phonology of the lexical pitch accent of Kyungsang Korean is being maintained by younger innovative speakers. We examine the pitch-accent patterns of nouns with various suffixes by comparing the speech of innovative Kyungsang speakers to that of older conservative speakers. It will be shown that while innovative speakers maintain the underlying distinction in the lexical pitch accent found with conservative speakers, the acoustic difference across the contrastive accent classes is substantially weaker in the speech of innovative speakers, for both noun stems and suffixes. Observation of individual differences in the phonetic realisation of the pitch accent and comparison with tonal patterns of Seoul Korean provide an insight into this sound change, offering evidence for how and why the acoustic distinction has weakened. This study thus documents a process of diachronic change in the prosody of Kyungsang Korean.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

*

The Phonology editors and three anonymous reviewers have provided us with many insightful and valuable comments and critiques that helped us improve the quality of this work. We thank Byunggon Yang and Soonbok Kwon at Pusan National University, Kyungae Kim, Yeonmi Park and Hoyeol Ryu at Hankyong National University and the staff at Youngdo Senior Welfare Centre for their help in recruiting participants in Korea. Portions of this research were conducted as part of the first author's dissertation at the University of Kansas.

The ANOVA results and data plots in §4.1 and the individual variation figures in §4.2.2 are available as online supplementary materials at http://www.journals.cambridge.org/issue_Phonology/Vol33No02.

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