음성음운형태론연구 20집 3호 박재익

Park, Jae-Ick. 2014. 한국어 기식음의 모음 앞 약화 현상에 대한 음운론적 해석: 방언, 세대, 남녀별 조사 결과를 바탕으로. Studies in Phonetics, Phonology and Morphology 20.3. 323-355. 

The purpose of this study is to provide the results of the survey on aspiration lenition phenomenon found in Korean speakers and to try to give a phonological theoretic explanation for the characteristics of the results. The results come from the speech data of 120 people from Cholla, Kyungsang and Seoul dialects, male and female, and in two generations. The findings of the survey were: (1) There is a meaningful difference among the aspirated consonants of four different places of articulation, (2) The combination of a noun and a case marker produces more lenition than the combination of a verb and an ending, (3) Lexically aspirated consonants are more likely to weaken to unaspirated than phonologically driven aspirated consonants by coalescence, (4) Verbs with complex coda tend to lose their aspiration more than verbs with the coda of a single consonant, (5) The older generation produces more aspiration lenition than the younger generation. The explanation for the findings is provided in terms of a possible engagement of VOT difference, analogy, the status or frequency of the morpheme boundary, generation difference and perspectives of the aspirated consonants. The implications of the aspiration lenition are also supported by synchronic and diachronic evidence such as emphatic forms with aspiration, spirantization, and spelling errors and hypercorrection. With regards to theoretical approach on the aspiration lenition, the serial derivational rules can derive most of the variants found in the survey, but they cannot account for the forms made by the revival of aspiration after neutralization at the morpheme boundary. Traditional optimality theory selects the most optimal form as an output, but since individuals and groups of people uttered various output forms from the same input, the theory should be adjusted to accommodate all acceptable candidates.