Articulation and Acoustics of Korean Liquids: A Case Study in Loanword Adaptation
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This paper is a case study in phonetic variation in the realization of liquid consonants (laterals and rhotics) in Korean loanwords from English. Korean has a single liquid phoneme, /L/, which is restricted in the native vocabulary to word-medial and word-final positions. Word-medially, it is realized as a tap if single and as a lateral if geminate; word-finally, it is realized as a lateral (Ahn, 2002). The restriction against word-initial liquids, however, is relaxed in English loanwords (Iverson & Kim, 1987), with recent studies observing a range of realizations: a tap, a lateral, or an approximant (Yun & Kang, 2019).To better understand the details of this variation, we collected electropalatography (EPG) and acoustic data from two native Korean speakers fluent in English. The speakers produced word-initial and word-medial liquids in loanwords, as well as similar sounds in native words and in English words.Articulatory measurements of Center of Gravity (CoG) of linguopalatal contact, the amount of contact (Q), and liquid duration revealed clear lateral-rhotic distinctions in native Korean words, in English words, as well as in loanwords – in word-medial position. As anticipated, word-initial liquids in loanwords exhibited a range of linguopalatal patterns. A follow-up acoustic analysis using Yun and Kang's (2019) criteria showed that word-initial liquids were realized as laterals, approximants, or taps, with these realizations only partially dependent on the English source consonant (/l/ or /ɹ/) and somewhat different between the speakers. The male speaker favoured approximant and laterals realizations (47% and 39%), while the female speaker favoured taps and, to a lesser extent, laterals (68% and 31%).In sum, this study provides some new insights into individual strategies in the production of liquids in Korean, adding to our understanding of loanword adaptation. To confirm these findings, we are currently collecting acoustic data from additional Korean speakers.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".