Hong, Soonhyun. 2020. Systematic centralized reduction at the offset of Korean monophthong signals in spontaneous speech. Studies in Phonetics, Phonology, and Morphology 26.3. 545-565. The present paper reports the observation that the signals of all Korean monophthong types in spontaneous speech are characterized by a unique spectral pattern over the temporal domain. Over the course of production, Korean monophthong signals showed quite stable F1/F2 frequencies from 20% to 50% of vowel duration, but drastically moved toward the center of the acoustic vowel space from 50% to 80% of vowel duration. This unique spectral pattern was shared by signals of all monophthong types produced by both males and females. It was also found that centralized vowel reduction at the offset was more frequent in shorter signals than longer ones. The unique spectral centralization locally at the offset in Korean signals did not pattern together with reports in the literature that across-the-board articulatory undershoot occurs in the entire temporal domain of vowel signals in English and French. (Inha University, Professor)

 

Keywords: vowel undershoot, reduction, centralization, Korean spontaneous speech