Domain-initial denasalisation in Busan Korean: A cross-generational case study

Korean domain-initial nasals have been reported to lose their nasality in Accentual Phrase-initial or higher prosodic domain-initial positions in the prosodic hierarchy. Researchers disagree about the exact nature of the phenomenon, and whether it should be called ‘nasality weakening’ instead. They also debate whether there is a proportional link between the degree of denasalisation and the relative position of the prosodic domain in which the nasal is initial. If there is, Korean denasalisation could be argued to be an interesting case of domain-initial strengthening, a phenomenon found in various languages. The paper conducts preliminary acoustic and auditory analyses of the production of domain-initial nasals by four older and four younger speakers from Busan, Korea, with the focus on revealing any pattern found in the variation in the realisation of denasalisation among the speakers and its relationship with the prosodic position.