Microsoft Word - ICKL_abstract-final.docx

This study investigates the development of a phrase-initial pitch contrast in Seoul Korean (SK) and also its effect on Korean prosody. SK is known to show a pitch contrast phrase-initially, depending on the initial onset consonant of Accentual Phrases (AP), due to a recent tonogenesislike sound change. If an AP starts with an aspirated or tensed consonant, it shows a H pitch; otherwise, it shows a L pitch [1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9]. While most previous studies focus on the trade-off between VOT and pitch contrast among voiceless stops, none of them has asked how this sound change affects the overall pitch pattern within APs. We draw from a large-scale speech corpus published by the National Institute of the Korean Language [6] to provide a dynamic picture of how the AP-initial pitch contrast has been developed within APs over time. The corpus is based on the read speech of 60 male and 60 female speakers of SK, whose year of birth (YOB) ranges from 1932 to 1984. Our preliminary results include 116 out of the 120 speakers and 15 selected sentences, which contain at least two APs staring with a tensed or aspirated consonant. The selected sentences include 98 APs per speaker and 344 syllables per speaker (11368 APs and 39432 syllables in total). The mean f0 value of each syllable is obtained using Praat, and the obtained f0 is either converted to semitones (st=log2(Hz/100)*12) or to ratio to mean f0 (Hz/mean Hz) for each speaker to compare different age x gender groups.