Development of Stop Consonants in Korean

Abstract. The purpose of this study was to examine acoustically the developmental characteristics of Korean stops. Stop productions were obtained from 30 Korean male and female children in two age ranges (5 and 10 years). Voice-Onset-Time (VOT) delay and fundamental frequency (f₀) at the onset of vowel were measured for sequences of word-initial stop followed by the vowel /a/. These were analysed as a function of age, sex, place of articulation and stop manner category. Measure-ments of f₀ were also made at the middle of the vowel /i/ in order to compare with vowel-onset f₀. Results revealed that VOT values were not significantly different in terms of age, but did differ by sex in that boys produced significantly longer VOT lag than girls in the aspirated stop series. In addition, VOT varied by stop category and place of articulation. Vowel-onset f₀ differed between sexes as well as by stop manner category, but vowel-middle f₀ was not significantly different be-tween sexes. As expected, both vowel-onset and vowel-middle f₀ were higher in 5 year-old children than in 10 year-old children. The results of this study indicate that, overall, differences which corre-late with sex and age are more prominent for laryngeal tension distinctions than for temporal coordi-nation gestures in Korean children, suggesting that sex and age differences in stop consonants during the pre-adolescent period should be examined across languages.