1. Korean Phonology
한국어
Alex Wilson
Linguistic Field Methods

2. Road Map
 Form rules for non-syllabic phonological rules in Korean
 Allophonic forms of the voiceless alveolar fricative [s] phoneme
 Speech speed and how it affects [l / ɾ] allophonic outcomes
 Vowel harmony
 Doubled stop phenomena
 Intervocalic voicing
 Unreleased stops
Goal: To better understand Korean phonological
processes as well as syllable structure

3. Road Map
 Form syllabic phonological rules
 Onset limit
 Nasal onset
 Coda cluster limitations
 Assimilation
 How a syllable can be constructed for Korean
 Hangul

4. The phoneme /s/ and its allophones
 The scripted character ㅅ is generally represented by the alveolar voiceless fricative
phoneme. It occurs most often as allophonic [s], but also has other outcomes:
 /s/  [ʃ]/_i/j 마시다 / 마셨다
 /s/  [t˺]/_# 다섯
 /s/  [s] elsewhere
The [t˺] in the above example shows us that it is unreleased.
Whenever nothing follows a final stop consonant in Korean, it’s
always unreleased.

5. Lateral flap
 The ㄹ phoneme is in dispute between [l] / [ɾ]. It appears to depend highly on the speed
at which it’s pronounced by the consultant
 [l]=slower speech
 [ɾ]=faster speech

6. Vowel harmony
 Vowel harmony is a phonological process in which vowels (in this case, those that
occur in adjacent affixes) will assimilate.
 Korean appears to have evidence of vowel harmony through what we’ve seen so far
according to past tense constructions. The vowel in the nucleus of the past tense affix
will alternate between [a] and [ʌ] according to the vowel in the nucleus of the verbal
stem.
 Examples:
 먹는다 [mʌŋnɯnda]  먹었다 [mʌgʌtta]
 앉다 [anda]  앉았다 [anʤatta]

7. Doubled stops
 Korean consonantal inventory includes three phonemes for all three bilabial,
alveolar and velar plosive phonemes: singular unaspirated, singular aspirated
and double-unaspirated. It’s difficult to distinguish exactly what these
phonemes are, as they seem to only occur in Korean.
 Minimal pairs:
 방 [paŋ] “room”
 빵 [ppaŋ] “bread”

8. Intervocalic voicing
 Stops and affricates appear as only unvoiced within Korean’s phonological
inventory. This is because voicing is an allophonic feature of Korean.
 가 + 다 = 가 다
[ka] + [ta] = [kada]
개 + 가 = 개 가
[ke] + [ka] = [kega]
/+obstruent –voice/  [+obstruent +voice]/V_V

9. Onsets
 Korean onsets are limited to one consonant followed by one glide at the most.
Anything less sonorant than a glide or semi-vowel is impossible for Korean
syllables:
σ
C (rime)
V C
[m a l]

10. Nasal onset phenomenon
 We were briefly introduced to a strange pronunciation phenomenon in Korean
where nasal consonants in onsets begin to resemble stops, perhaps in quick-
speech.
 먹  [m/bʌk˺]?
 너  [n/dʌ]?
 It should be worth noting that this cannot occur with the velar nasal/plosives, as onsets cannot
possibly consist of a velar nasal in this language, like in English.

11. Limit of consonants in codas
 One consonant per coda maximum if the following syllable begins with
another consonant,
 Two consonants per coda maximum if the following syllable begins with a
vowel.
 Example: we’ve seen this in the verb for ‘sit’:
 앉다 [anda]  앉았다 [anʤatta]

12. Consonant assimilation
 Oftentimes we’ve seen two adjacent consonants (one in the coda of one syllable
with another in the onset of the next) that have allophonic outcomes due to their
difference in place of articulation:
 먹 [mʌk˺] = verbal stem “eat”  먹는다 [mʌŋnɯnda], thus /k/  [ƞ]/_[+nasal, +consonantal]
 Similarly, a glottal fricative within the coda of one syllable changes the plosive of a following from
unaspirated to aspirated:
 좋 [ʤoh] = “good”  좋다 [ʤot^ha], thus /t/  [t^h]/[h]_

13. Syllable Structure and Hangul
 CV, CVC, V, VC
 Korean characters are naturally set up in a very convenient fashion where
each “block” of characters represents one syllable and each of the characters
correspond to a certain sound
(C)
V
C
(C)
V
(C) V
C *C
Only pronounced
if no consonant
in next syllable’s
onset
(C) V
C
(C) V

14. Thank you