Earticle

This paper takes a syntactic approach to Superiority in English. Since Chomsky (1973), Superiority has been at the forefront of syntactic analysis. However, Pesetsky (1987) argues that the semantic or discourse property of D-linking plays an important role in circumventing a Superiority violation. More recently, Sag et al. (2008) argue that Superiority does not hold in Universal Grammar, accounting for apparent Superiority effects in terms of processing. In response to these recent attempts, in this paper we first provided a syntactic account for Superiority. We argue that the superior wh-phrase behaves differently from the inferior one, and that the movement of the latter over the former forms a chain whose links are preserved at LF. Therefore, locality-violating chain links for Superiority-violating movement are kept intact, causing an LF crash. Building on this syntactic analysis, we conducted an event-related potentials (ERP) study of a set of examples involving Superiority. It was found that P600 as one of the ERP components was evoked by the examples where Superiority is violated and at the same time the wh-in-situ is non-D-linked or bare, and that another ERP component of LAN was evoked at the verb when an apparently Superiority-violating wh-moved expression is not D-linked. Since P600 has been well regarded as a reliable index signaling syntactic ill-formedness, our finding points to the fact that the nature of Superiority is syntactic.

This paper investigates a three-way laryngeal contrast observed in one Korean-speaking child aged from 13 to 20 months. Her production data was transcribed and analyzed in terms of acoustic properties in order to systematically examine if there was a developmental trend when the data was divided into two periods (first 4 months (13~16 months) and second 4 months (17~20 months). The production data of her primary caretaker was also phonetically analyzed in synchrony with child production data. The results showed that there was a developmental trend in the acquisition of the three-way laryngeal contrast although her stage of language development was not similar to the established three-way contrast in adult speech. Firstly, the child produced lenis more frequently than the other stop categories in the first four months (13~16 month) while she produced fortis more frequently in the second four months (17~20 months). Secondly, the frequency of aspirated stops increased over time as that of lenis stops decreased. Thirdly, although adult production demonstrated a bimodal distribution (fortis vs. lenis/aspirated) in the VOT continuum, child production consistently displayed a unimodal distribution both in the first four months and the second four months. The results suggested that ease of articulation played a key role in the child production (e.g., lenis/fortis vs. aspirated). At the same time, child production has not reached an adult-like VOT distribution.

This study investigates the structure of the mid and low vowel systems of bilingual speakers of Korean and English, and considers how some current theories of phonetics learning would model their bilingual vowel system. Nine native speakers of Seoul Korean, nine native speakers of American English, and seven early bilingual speakers of Korean and English participated in this study. The native speakers of Korean also served as late learners of English. Five monophthong mid and low vowels of Korean and English were read in carrier phrases, and their F1 and F2 frequency values were measured. The early bilinguals exhibited native-like F1 and F2 values for most of the Korean and English vowel categories. Also, the Korean vowels [e] and [ɛ], and English vowels [ɔ ] and [ɑ] were realized as merged forms in their speech, just as in that of the native speakers of each language. On the other hand, the late learners did not achieve native-like values for most of the English vowel categories. The vowel space size of the late learners' English was larger than that of the native speakers of English and similar to that of their Korean. These results demonstrate that the age of learning effect can be modeled in terms of the Speech Learning Model (e.g., Flege 1995) and Exemplar-based Model (e.g., Foulkes & Docherty 2006), both of which emphasize the role of linguistic experience in phonetics learning. Finally, there were no clear indications of a reorganization of the phonemes of the two languages within a unified bilingual phonetic system.

The purpose of this paper is to present an analysis of grapheme <j> in loanwords as well as native Korean, and decomposition of /ʃ/ of donor languages into Korean [sj] or [sw]. It is contended that at the context of post-/ʧ/, the synchronic orthographic <j> and its partner in the earlier periods are spurious phonological constructs. By contrast, at the context of post-/s/ in Enlightenment Period (1880-1910), the emergence of yod is indeterminate in its phonological embodiment. Meanwhile, decomposition of input /ʃ/ involved with contemporary loanwords shows consistency of yod as a phonological construct. The analysis based on decomposition of /ʃ/ gains support from the view of disintegration of segments with dual places of articulation. Finally, for handling overapplication of decomposition as embodied as unetymological yod in loanwords like sofa [sjopha], sashi [sjasi], it is imperative to adduce another dimension in loanword adoption, i.e., alienation of loanwords from the native word stock.

The goal of this paper is to argue that adequate and insightful analyses are indeed possible in OT for a unified account of phonological behaviors of some irregular stems. I bring to light some behaviors of /s/-irregular and /h/-irregular stems illuminating a generalization that they share a certain property in their input forms. I propose that both types of irregular stems have a mora associated to their stem-final /s/ and /h/ in the first place, which contrasts with the /s/-regular stems that do not have such an association. The prediction is therefore made that two seemingly different types of stems with the same input specification will show phonologically the same behavior in some relevant environments. This prediction is dramatically confirmed by the fact that the stem-final /s/ and /h/ in question are deleted when they are placed before a vowel-initial suffix. The analysis carries over to some additional cases where the stems are followed by consonant-initial suffixes and where the stem-final /h/ constitutes a part of consonant cluster in the input. In all cases, I show that the present system I propose captures phonological generalizations in a way that earlier approaches to /s/- and /h/-irregular stems could not. All the constraints to be employed in the analysis are independently-motivated in the literature. And there is little doubt that those constraints employed in this article are required anyway in the grammar of any other language.

This study explored the perceptual interaction between schwa deletion and English phonotactic constraints by conducting syllable-count experiments on native English speakers and Korean and Japanese learners of English, using English nonce word stimuli. The results of both response accuracy and latency showed that English speakers were abel to discriminate between legal and illegal onset clusters in English resulting from schwa deletion, regardless of the number of the syllables of the stimuli. However, Korean and Japanese learners of English were not sensitive to English phonotactic constraints on legal vs. illegal onset sequences created by schwa deletion. Similarly, English speakers' perception of illegal onsets resulting from schwa deletion conformed to the predictions of the sonority-based onset markedness in that their perception of onsets of sonority rises was more accurate and faster than sonority levels and falls in order. On the contrary, Korean and Japanese learners of English displayed a partial sensitivity to the onset-markedness, as the mean accuracy of sonority plateaus was higher than that of sonority rises and as the number of the syllables of the stimulus items also affected the general results. Overall, the results indicate that English phonotactic restrictions as well as the sonority-driven onset-markedness play a role in the perception of onset sequences resulting from schwa deletion. The implications of the results for speech perception, markedness, and lexical representation were further discussed.

This study performed several measures of phonotactic probabilities of segment sequences involving two glides in Korean as a measure for distinguishing two contrasting theories regarding glide constituency in Korean (namely, the Onset vs. Nucleus Hypothesis). Specifically, I compared the phonotactic probabilities for C(onsonant)-Glide vs. Glide-Vowel; similarly, I compared C-Vowel vs. Glide-Vowel. The prediction is that if the glide is associated to the vowel, the phonotactic probabilities of Glide-Vowel will be systematically higher than those of other sequences. The reverse pattern will appear if the glides are part of onset. The results indicate that (i) in the C+Vowel vs. Glide+Vowel comparison, the general pattern is that the degree of cohesion between a single glide and its following vowel is in general stronger than that between a single non-glide consonant and its following vowel, (ii) in the C+Glide and Glide+Vowel comparison, however, the degree of cohesion between a syllable-initial non-glide consonant and its following glide is in general stronger than that between a syllable-initial glide and its following vowel, but crucially (iii) overall the association strengths between glides and their neighboring segments are highly gradient. Implications of the current findings for the syllabic affiliations of the glides are discussed.

The aim of this paper is to review the proposals for the immobility of X’ category, to clarify their stipulatory nature, and to propose the mobility of X’ category. To reach this aim, the parametric approach to functional categories is adopted, which is crucial to the possibility of X’ movement. Assuming functional category F, in a language with F, the X’ movement is hard to appear overtly, because there is always FP which can be regarded as mover. But in a language without F, there is no FP, so the X’ movement appears ubiquitously. Empirically, the Korean V’ movement is analyzed. After the shortcomings of adjunction to argument approach and shell or functional category v approach is highlighted, the real existence V’ movement is emphasized.

The phenomenon of Right Node Raising (RNR) has invited a wealth of discussion in the literature, centered around the following three major approaches: rightward across-the-board extraction, backward ellipsis, and multi-dominance. Despite the success of each of these approaches to some substantial degree, however, it still remains agnostic whether all the reported properties of RNR can be captured by any single approach exclusively. This paper argues that in deriving RNR structures, both parallel merge and (simple) merge should be operative for the optimal derivation of RNR, assuming that UG employs three types of merge, i.e., external merge, internal merge, and parallel merge (sharing by multi-dominance) (Citko 2005). I will provide empirical evidence for the division of labor between the two operations in RNR, and propose that given the interface economy, parallel merge is the most preferred option for RNR constructions; but at the same time, merge (followed by ellipsis), another independent operation in UG, should be a readily available option for RNR constructions. deletion, coordination

This study explores durational interaction of tautosyllabic consonants and vowels in English and Korean speech production and the role of vowel duration in Korean stop recognition. The effect of laryngeal contrasts in stops on the following vowel duration and the effect of the intrinsic vowel duration on the release duration of preceding stops are explored in different prosodic contexts: utterance-initial/medial, focal accented, and nonfocused. Results reveal the durational correlation between prevocalic consonants and following vowels, a trade-off relationship between VOTs and vowel durations. An asymmetry is found in CV interaction in that the effect of consonantal duration on vowel duration is greater. English, however, reveals increase in both consonant and vowel in the accented syllable rather independently, whereas the entire syllable unit shows accentual increase in Korean. The constancy of syllable duration is, therefore, found more strongly sustained in Korean and the difference is further discussed in terms of linguistic rhythm amongst the languages. The systematic variation of vowel duration due to different VOTs of prevocalic stops suggests vowel duration as a plausible perceptual cue in identifying the preceding stops in Korean. Identification tests on stop laryngeal categories in Korean were conducted with 12 native Korean listeners. The results show that listeners employ multiple cues of VOT, pitch, and vowel duration in identifying the stop categories, and that vowel duration is actively used, even with unambiguous F0. The effects of vowel duration were more obvious in tense and aspirated stops in the higher F0 ranges.