Variations of Obligatory Phonological Processes in Korean by Children and Adults

Abstract

This study investigated whether non-standard variants of two obligatory phonological processes in Korean, h-merger and t-palatalization, were acceptable to native Korean speakers in perception, similar to production. For this purpose, the study conducted accuracy and sound naturalness judgment tests on native Korean children and adults. Sixty sentences containing either standard forms (e.g., [iphak]) or spelling-based non-standard variants (e.g., [iphak]) for the same target words (e.g., /iphak/ ‘admission’) were employed in the accuracy judgement test and 60 sentences with the same target words were used in the sound naturalness judgment test. The results of the perception tests indicated that children did not show a meaningful difference between h-merger and t-palatalization. By contrast, adults favored standard forms of t-palatalization while they were more tolerant of the non-standard variants of h-merger. The adults also significantly outperformed the children. Therefore, the results revealed that the occurrence of non-standard variants in production was also attested in perception but the magnitude of acceptance of non-standard variants varied with phonological processes and age group unlike in production. The different degree of acceptance was partly attributed to the different nature of the two phonological processes and Korean phonotactic restrictions. (Korea University․Kyonggi University)