Chapter 12 Acquiring Korean

NOVA Comprehensive Perspectives on Child Speech Development and Disorders

1

Chapter 12Acquiring Korean

Minjung Kim


2

Introduction

• This chapter describes how typically developing children acquire the sound system of Korean– Sound system of standard Korean– Chronology of acquisition – Speech error patterns


3

Korean Speakers in the World• Official language of North Korea and South Korea• Spoken by approximately 78 million speakers• Sizable populations of Korean speakers in

– China– United States– Japan– Former Soviet Union

• Considered part of the Altaic language family• Agglutinating • Syntactic structure: Subject-Object-Verb• Lexicon

– 35% native words– 60% Sino-Korean words– 5 % loan words


4

The Sound Patterns of Korean: Vowels

• Diphthongs– Three semivowels or glides (/j, w, ɰ/) are combined with other vowels to create ten

diphthongs (/jɛ, jɑ, ju, jʌ, jo, wi, wɛ, wɑ, wʌ, ɰi/) • Phonotactics of Korean suggest that these are true diphthongs rather than glide/vowel

sequences

Table 12.1 Korean vowels


5

The Sound Patterns of Korean: ConsonantsTable 12.2. Korean consonants

Note: The different laryngeal types have been termed differently in the literature; “tense-aspirated-lax” or “fortis-aspirated-lenis.” In this chapter, the terms “lax-tense-aspirated” are used.


6

Stops• Three types of Korean word-initial stops can be

distinguished by three acoustic-phonetic properties:– VOT

• Shortest for tense stops• Intermediate for lax stops• Longest for aspirated stops

– fundamental frequency (f0) of the following vowel• Lower following lax stops

– voice quality at the onset of the following vowel • Breathy after lax stop• Creaky (pressed) after tense stop


7

Fricatives• Alveolar fricatives (i.e., /s, s*/)

– Lax /s/ • frication followed by aspiration• Longer frication

– Tense /s*/ • Frication followed by glottalization at the onset of the following vowel• Shorter frication

Remaining consonants /m, n, ŋ, l/• All consonants except /ŋ/ can occur in word-initial position• Only /p, t, k, m, m, ŋ, l/ can occur in syllable-final position


8

Word structure• All syllables have a vocalic core with optional C

onset and C coda• Onset C can be followed by a glide• (C)(G)V(C)• Only CG clusters occur within the same syllable• C sequences can occur at syllable boundaries– /kɑm-tɕɑ/


9

Speech Sound Development of Korean

Age and Order of Phoneme Acquisition• Compared to studies of English, fewer studies have

investigate the development of Korean• General finding: Stops are acquired earlier than other

consonants• Study of 150 typically developing Korean children ages 3,

4, and 5 years (Um, 1994)– All three types of stops and affricates were produced by over

90% of children at all three ages– Fricatives were produced correctly by 50% of children age 3

years and 60% of children age 4 and 5


10

Table 12.3 Developmental patterns of Korean consonants by syllable- initial and syllable- final position (Kim and Pae, 2005)


11

• Study of word-initial obstruents in children ages2;6, 3;0, 3;6, and 4;0 (Kim & Stoel-Gammon, 2010)– Age of emergence: 75% of the children produced at least one correct production of the target

phoneme– Age of mastery: 75% (90%) of the children produced the target phoneme correctly at least 75% of

the time• All tense stops mastered by 90% of children age 2;6• Aspirated and lax stops emerged by most children age 3;0• Lax stops mastered by age 4;0

• Acoustic study of word-initial stops (Kim & Stoel-Gammon, 2009)– Lax stops are phonetically and phonologically complex, which could explain their late acquisition

• Slightly aspirated in utterance-initial position but voiced intervocalically • Low f0 of the following vowel (same for lax affricates)

• Lax fricatives acquired at age 4;0, before their tense counterparts– Increased articulatory complexity

• The /s*/ is produced with longer frication that is often followed by glottalization at the onset of the following vowel.


12

Vowels• All vowels are acquired by age 3;0 (Um, 1994)– Exception: some of the diphthongs


13

Phonological Error Patterns

• Korean children demonstrate some error patterns predicted by Jakobson’s universal theory – Substitutions of stops for affricates and fricatives

• Other error patterns appear to be specific to Korean– Substitutions of tense stops for lax or aspirated stops

(tensing)– Velar fronting is less common than in other languages

as velar stops are acquired as early as alveolar stops in Korean


14

• Productions of 220 Korean children aged 2;6 to 6;5 to propose a preliminary norm of the phonological error patterns for the Korean-Test of Articulation for Children (K-TAC) (Kim (2006)– Whole-word errors (and age of suppression), e.g.,

• Reduplication (e.g., /sɑtʰɑŋ/ → [tʰɑŋ tʰɑŋ], “candy”) (3;0)• Consonant harmony (e.g., /nɑmu/ → [mamu], “tree”) (3;)• Word-final consonant deletion (e.g., /tɕhɛk/ → [tɕhɛ], “book”) (3;)• Intersyllabic cluster simplification (e.g., /oks*usu/ → [os*usu], “corn”) (4;0)

– Segment-change errors and age of suppression, e.g.,• Tensing or deaspiration (e.g., /phodo/ → [p*ot*o], “grape”) (3;)• Velar fronting (e.g., /kʌbuki/ → [dʌbudi], “turtle”) (3;0)• Nasalization or stopping of liquid (e.g., /kolɛ/ → [konɛ] or [kodɛ], “whale”) (3;0)• Liquid simplification (e.g., /kolɛ/ → [kojɛ], “whale”) (4;0)• Affrication (e.g., /s*ɑl/ → [tɕ*ɑl], “rice”) (4;0)• Palatalization (e.g., /phodo/ → [phodjo], “grape”) (4;0)• Stopping of fricative or affricate (/tɕɑdoŋtɕhɑ/ → [tɑdoŋthɑ]) (5;0)• Stopping of liquids (3;0)• Interdentalization of fricative (e.g., /sɑtʰɑŋ/ → [s̪ɑtʰɑŋ])


15

• Error patterns across different laryngeal types in obstruents (Kim & Stoel-Gammon, 2010)– Aspirated stops were produced as either tense or lax stops before age 3;6 – Lax stops were produced as either tense or aspirated stops in younger

age groups but only as aspirated stops in 3;6 and 4;0 year-old children– Affricates

• Stopping predominant with a tendency to preserve the original laryngeal type – Fricatives

• Substitutions of [th] or [tɕh] for /s/ (stopping) were most common• Substitution of [th] for /s/ was more common in younger age groups• Substitution of [tɕh] (i.e., affrication) for /s/ occurred more frequently in older

children• The similar developmental pattern was found for the target /s*/ which was

replaced by [t*] or [tɕ*]


16

Connections

• Other languages– Chapter 10: French– Chapter 11: Brazilian Portuguese

• Common trends across many languages: Chapter 9


17

Concluding Remarks

• Korean has an unusual sound system in terms of variations in laryngeal types

• The three-way word-initial Korean stops and affricates are acquired by the age of 4

• The two-way Korean alveolar fricatives are not acquired until after age 6;5

• Further research in older children is required to understand the age of acquisition for Korean fricatives

• With regard to sound errors, both language-universal and language-specific error patterns were present

Documents

Chapter 12 Acquiring Korean