Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

On the role of contrastivity in the development of the /e \(\sim \upvarepsilon /\) merger in Korean

  • Published:
Journal of East Asian Linguistics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This paper seeks to assess the role of functional factors in the development of the /e \(\sim \) \(\upvarepsilon \)/ unconditioned merger that has taken place in Seoul Korean. We explore several alternative measures of functional load, one measure of phonetic distance evaluated on a perceptual scale, and a simple integrative measure, which combines functional load and phonetic distance into a single ‘contrastivity index.’ Our results show that, while both functional load and perceptual distance hint at the fact that /e \(\sim \) \(\upvarepsilon \)/ was a weak contrast, this effect is clearest when these two factors are integrated together, especially when functional load is measured as phone-level entropy loss. The proposed metric thus offers a fruitful way of modeling the interaction between functional factors in the development of mergers.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Ahn, Sang-cheol. 1998. An introduction to Korean phonology. Seoul: Hansin Munhwasa.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beddor, Patrice Speeter. 1991. “Predicting the structure of phonological systems”. Phonetica 48 (2–4): 83–107.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bladon, Anthony, and Gunnar Fant. 1978. “A two-formant model and the cardinal vowels”. Speech Transmission Laboratory, Quarterly Progress and Status Report 19 (1): 1–8.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blevins, Juliette. 2004. Evolutionary phonology. The emergence of sound patterns. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bybee, Joan. 2015. “Articulatory processing and frequency of use in sound change”. In The Oxford handbook of historical phonology, ed. Patrick Honeybone, and Joseph Salmons, 467–484. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Calamaro, Shira, and Gaja Jarosz. 2015. “Learning general phonological rules from distributional information: A computational model”. Cognitive Science 39 (3): 647–666.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carter, David M. 1987. “An information-theoretic analysis of phonetic dictionary access”. Computer Speech and Language 2 (1): 1–11.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Clements, George Nick. 2003. “Feature economy in sound systems”. Phonology 20 (3): 287–333.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • de Boer, Bart. 2001. The origins of vowel systems. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ernestus, Mirjam. 2014. “Acoustic reduction and the roles of abstractions and exemplars in speech processing”. Lingua 142: 27–41.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eychenne, Julien, and Tae-Yeoub Jang. 2015. “On the merger of Korean mid front vowels”. Journal of the Korean Society of Speech Sciences 7 (2): 119–129.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fant, C. Gunnar M. 1973. Speech sounds and features. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

  • Flemming, Edward. 2004. “Contrast and perceptual distinctiveness”. In Phonetically based phonology, ed. Bruce Hayes, Robert Kirchner, and Donca Steriade, 232–276. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Gahl, Susanne. 2008. “‘Time’ and ‘Thyme’ are not homophones: The effect of lemma frequency on word durations in spontaneous speech”. Language 84 (3): 474–496.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Garrett, Andrew, and Johnson Keith. 2013. “Phonetic bias in sound change”. In Origins of sound change: Approaches to phonologization, ed. Alan C .L. Yu, 51–97. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Hall, Kathleen Currie. 2009. A probabilistic model of phonological relationships from contrast to allophony. Ph.D. dissertation, The Ohio State University.

  • Hall, Kathleen Currie. 2013. “A typology of intermediate phonological relationships”. The Linguistic Review 30 (2): 215–275.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hall-Lew, Lauren. 2012. “Improved representation of variance in measures of vowel merger”. Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics 9 (1): 060002.

    Google Scholar 

  • Han, Jeong-Im, and Hyunsook Kang. 2013. “Cross-generational change of /o/ and /u/ in Seoul Korean II: Spectral interactions in normalized vowel space”. Journal of the Korean Society of Speech Sciences 5 (2): 25–31.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hermansky, Hynek, and D.J. Broad. 1989. “The effective second formant F2’ and the vocal tract front-cavity” 480–483. IEEE.

  • Hockett, Charles Francis. 1955. A manual of phonology. Baltimore: Waverly Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hockett, Charles Francis. 1966. “The quantification of functional load: A linguistic problem” Rand Corporation memorandum RM-5168-PR, Santa Monica, California.

  • Hong, Yunsook. 1988. A sociolinguistic study of Seoul Korean. Seoul: Hanshin Publishing Co.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hume, Elizabeth, and Keith Johnson. 2001. “A model for the interplay of speech perception and phonology”. In The role of speech perception in phonology, ed. Elizabeth Hume, and Keith Johnson, 3–26. New York: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hume, Elizabeth, and Frédéric Mailhot. 2013. “The role of entropy and surprisal in phonologization and language change”. In Origins of sound change: Approaches to phonologization, ed. by Alan C.L. Yu, 29–47. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Hume, Elizabeth, Kathleen Currie Hall, Andrew Wedel, Andrew Ussishkin, Martine Adda-Decker, and Cédric Gendrot. 2013. “Anti-markedness patterns in French epenthesis: An information-theoretic approach”. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 37 (1): 104–123.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jang, Hye Jin, and Jiyoung Shin. 2006. “An acoustic study on the generational difference of the monophthongs in the Daegu Dialect”. Malsori 57 (1): 15–30.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kaplan, Abby. 2011. “How much homophony is normal?”. Journal of Linguistics 47 (03): 631–671.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kim, Hansaem. 2005. Hyeondae Gugeo Sayong Bindo Josa 2. Seoul: National Institute of the Korean Language.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kim, Hansaem. 2006. “Korean national corpus in the 21st century Sejong project”. In Proceedings of the 13th National Institute of Japanese Literature (NIJL) International Symposium, 49–54.

  • King, Robert D. 1967. “Functional load and sound change”. Language 43 (4): 831–852.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Labov, William. 1994. Principles of linguistic change. Volume 1: Internal factors. Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell.

  • Lee, Dong-Joo, Jong-Heum Yeon, In-Beom Hwang, and Sang-Goo Lee. 2010. “Kkokkoma: gwangyehyeong deiteobeiseureul hwaryonghan sejong malmungchi hwaryong dogu [KKMA: A Tool for Utilizing the Sejong Corpus based on Relational Database]”. Journal of KIISE: Computing Practices and Letters 16 (11): 1046–1050.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lee, Iksop, and S. Robert Ramsey. 2000. The Korean Language. Albany: State University of New York Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lee, Ki-Moon, and S. Robert Ramsey. 2011. A History of the Korean Language. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Lindblom, Björn. 1986. “Phonetic universals in vowel systems”. In Experimental phonology, ed. John J. Ohala, and Jeri J. Jaeger, 13–44. Orlando: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Martin, Samuel E. 2006. Reference grammar of Korean: A complete guide to the grammar and history of the Korean Language. Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Martinet, André. 1952. “Function, structure, and sound change”. Word 8: 1–32.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Martinet, André. 1955. Economie des changements phonétiques. Traité de phonologie diachronique. Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose. New edition 2005.

  • Martinet, André. 1978. “Function, structure, and sound change”. In Readings in historical phonology: Chapters in the theory of sound change, ed. Philip Baldi, and Ronald N. Werth, 121–159. University Park and London: The Pennsylvania State University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moon, Seung-Jae. 2007. “A fundamental phonetic investigation of Korean monophthongs”. Journal of the Korean Society of Phonetic Sciences and Speech Technology 62: 1–17. [In Korean].

    Google Scholar 

  • Navarro, Tomás. 1967. “Nuevos datos sobre el yeísmo en España”. Thesavrvs: Boletín del Instituto Caro y Cuervo 19 (1): 1–17.

    Google Scholar 

  • Oh, Yoon Mi, Christophe Coupé, Egidio Marsico, and François Pellegrino. 2015. “Bridging phonological system and lexicon: Insights from a corpus study of functional load”. Journal of Phonetics 53: 153–176.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ohala, John J. 1981. “The listener as a source of sound change”. In Papers from the parasession on language and behavior, 178–203. Chicago: Chicago Linguistics Society.

  • Oudeyer, Pierre-Yves. 2005. “The self-organization of speech sounds”. Journal of Theoretical Biology 233 (3): 435–449.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Park, Eunjeong L., and Sungzoon Cho. 2014. “KoNLPy: Korean natural language processing in Python”. In Proceedings of the 26th annual conference on human and cognitive language technology. Chuncheon, Korea.

  • Peperkamp, Sharon, Rozenn Le Calvez, Jean-Pierre Nadal, and Emmanuel Dupoux. 2006. “The acquisition of allophonic rules: statistical learning with linguistic constraints”. Cognition 101 (3): 31–41.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schwartz, Jean-Luc, Louis-Jean Boë, Nathalie Vallée, and Christian Abry. 1997. “The dispersion–focalization theory of vowel systems”. Journal of Phonetics 25 (3): 255–286.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Scobbie, James M, and Jane Stuart-Smith. 2008. “Quasi-phonemic contrast and the fuzzy inventory: Examples from Scottish English”. In Contrast in phonology: Theory, perception, acquisition, eds. Peter Avery, B. Elan Dresher, and Keren Rice, 87–114. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

  • Seong, Cheol-Jae. 2004. “An acoustic analysis on the Korean 8 monophthongs with respect to the acoustic variables on the F1/F2 vowel space”. Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea 23 (6): 454–461. [In Korean].

    Google Scholar 

  • Shannon, Claude Elwood. 1948. “A mathematical theory of communication”. The Bell System Technical Journal 27: 379–423.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shin, Jiyoung, Jieun Kiaer, and Jaeeun Cha. 2013. The sounds of Korean. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Silverman, Daniel. 2010. “Neutralization and anti-homophony in Korean”. Journal of Linguistics 46 (02): 453–482.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sohn, Ho-Min. 1999. The Korean language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sohn, Ho-min. 2012. “Middle Korean”. In The languages of Japan and Korea, ed. Nicolas Tranter, 73–122. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Steriade, Donca. 2007. “Contrast”. In The Cambridge handbook of phonology, ed. Paul de Lacy, 139–157. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Surendran, Dinoj, and Gina-Anne Levow. 2004. “The functional load of tone in Mandarin is as high as that of vowels”. In Proceedings of speech prosody, 99–102. Nara, Japan.

  • Surendran, Dinoj, and Partha Niyogi. 2003. “Measuring the usefulness (functional load) of phonological contrasts” Technical report, Technical Report TR-2003.

  • Surendran, Dinoj, and Partha Niyogi. 2006. “Quantifying the functional load of phonemic oppositions, distinctive features, and suprasegmentals”. Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. Series 4 279: 43.

  • Traunmüller, Hartmut. 1990. “Analytical expressions for the tonotopic sensory scale”. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 88 (1): 97–100.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Umeda, Hiroyuki. 1995. “Age differentiation of the vowel system in the Seoul Korean—Acoustic measurements”. Journal of Asian and African Studies 48–49: 443–453.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wang, William S.-Y. 1967. “The measurement of functional load”. Phonetica 16 (1): 36–54.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wedel, Andrew, Scott Jackson, and Abby Kaplan. 2013a. “Functional load and the Lexicon: Evidence that syntactic category and frequency relationships in minimal lemma pairs predict the loss of phoneme contrasts in language change”. Language and Speech 56 (3): 395–417.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wedel, Andrew, Abby Kaplan, and Scott Jackson. 2013b. “High functional load inhibits phonological contrast loss: A corpus study”. Cognition 128 (2): 179–186.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yang, Byunggon. 1992. “An acoustical study of Korean monophthongs produced by male and female speakers”. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 91 (4): 2280–2283.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yang, Byunggon. 1996. “A comparative study of American English and Korean vowels produced by male and female speakers”. Journal of Phonetics 24 (2): 245–261.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yeon, Jaehoon. 2012. “Korean dialects: A general survey”. In The languages of Japan and Korea, ed. Nicolas Tranter, 168–185. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Linguistics and Cognitive Science, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Yongin, South Korea

    Julien Eychenne

  2. Department of English Linguistics and Language Technology, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, South Korea

    Tae-Yeoub Jang

Authors
  1. Julien Eychenne
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Tae-Yeoub Jang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Julien Eychenne.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Eychenne, J., Jang, TY. On the role of contrastivity in the development of the /e \(\sim \upvarepsilon /\) merger in Korean. J East Asian Linguist 27, 111–139 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10831-018-9171-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10831-018-9171-7

Keywords

Search

Navigation