Phonetic implementation of Korean “denasalization” and its variation related to prosody

This paper reports the results of a phonetic experiment investigating Korean 'denasalization', specifically, on the amount of nasality as a function of different prosodic contexts. The variation in nasal energy of onset nasal consonants of 5 subjects, from regions where the tendency of ‘denasalization’ is reported to be strong (Kyunggi-do: 3 subjects) and weak (Kyungsang-do: 2 subjects) were examined. The results reveal that Korean ‘denasalization’ is incomplete and that nasality weakens as the prosodic boundary becomes stronger. Furthermore, the results uncovered a significant difference between two dialects in this tendency; nasal weakening is stronger in Kyunggi-Do dialects. The degree of nasality weakening as a correlate of segmental duration was also examined. The results show different patterns for the two dialects. The Kyungsang-Do speakers show (at least partially) duration-dependent variation of nasality; the longer the nasal relative to the tautosyllabic vowel, the weaker the nasality gets. In contrast, stratification of nasality, independent of the durational factor is observed for the Kyunggi-Do speakers. This suggests a different status of nasal weakening for the two dialects.