A Palatographic Investigation of Place of Articulation in Korean Coronal Obstruents

Abstract. This study uses static palatography to determine articulatory positions for coronal obstruents, for five native speakers of Seoul Korean in their twenties. For four of the speakers, affricates are consistently articulated slightly further back on the teeth than stops. However, stops, affricates and fricatives all show contact patterns in the denti-alveolar region. These results may reflect a shift in place of articulation of affricates from post-alveolar to denti-alveolar, for younger speakers of Korean. Gender differences are not observed for contact patterns on the palate, but contact patterns on the tongue do vary with gender. Female speakers in this study use laminal articulations, while male speakers use apico-laminal ones. The plain-aspirated-tense distinction does not affect articulatory measures of place of articulation, or amount of tongue-palate contact, implying that the lax-aspirated-tense distinction need not necessarily involve concomitant place distinctions.