Dialectal Variation in the Acoustic Correlates of Korean Stops

Most acoustic analyses of Korean stops have focused on the Seoul dialect, and the few dialect surveys that have been done used participants from different age groups and cannot be easily compared to each other. In this study, word-initial stop productions were collected from speakers of three Korean dialects (Seoul, Daegu, and Jeju) born between 1980 and 1991. The acoustic correlates of the stop laryngeal contrast in Jeju pattern similar to the Seoul dialect, appearing to participate in the sound change currently underway, but male Daegu speakers seem to be more conservative and still use VOT to signal the lax-aspirated contrast.