대한언어학회 전자저널

Kim, Miyeong & Oh, Mira. (2025). The effects of focus and prosodic position on the phonetic realization of Korean fricatives /s/ and /s/. The Linguistic Association of Korea Journal, 33(2), 1-25. This study investigates the phonetic realization of the phonological contrast between the Korean fricatives /s/ and /s/, focusing on the effects of focus and prosodic position within a word. An acoustic experiment was conducted with 15 native Korean speakers, analyzing the acoustic properties of the two fricatives in neutral and focused conditions at word-initial and word-medial positions. The results reveal three main findings. First, the contrast between /s/ and /s/ is cued by a greater number of acoustic features in word-initial than in word-medial position. In neutral word-initial contexts, COG, frication duration, aspiration duration, vowel duration, f0, and H1H2 significantly contribute to the contrast, whereas only COG, frication duration, and H1H2 remain robust in neutral word-medial contexts. Second, focus affects the acoustic realization of the contrast differently depending on position. In focused word-initial position, durational cues such as frication, aspiration, and vowel length are primarily used, while in focused word-medial position, COG, frication duration, aspiration duration, and H1H2 play a role. Third, frication duration emerges as a consistently reliable cue for distinguishing /s/ and /s/ across all conditions. These findings suggest that focus does not uniformly enhance all acoustic cues and that prosodic position critically shapes the phonetic implementation of phonological contrasts in Korean

# 초점어(focused words) # 운율 위치(prosodic position) # 음향 단서 (acoustic cues) # 음운 대립(phonological contrast) # 한국어 마찰음 (Korean fricatives)

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