Home Linguistics & Semiotics A two-decade-interval variation in vowel insertion after word-final English and French postvocalic plosives in Korean adaptation: A sociolinguistic account
Article
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

A two-decade-interval variation in vowel insertion after word-final English and French postvocalic plosives in Korean adaptation: A sociolinguistic account

  • Hyunsoon Kim EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: August 1, 2017
Linguistics Vanguard
From the journal Linguistics Vanguard Volume 3 Issue 1

Abstract:

We investigated whether variation in vowel insertion after word-final English and French postvocalic plosives in Korean adaptation has changed at a two-decade interval by collecting English and French loanword data in the early 1990s and the year 2011. Our data survey has revealed that the overall frequency of final vowel insertion and that of variable insertion and/or no vowel insertion are significantly decreased and increased, respectively, in the 2011 data, no matter whether the plosives are English or French. The data survey is supported by a recent perception study wherein young Koreans have no difference in vowel insertion after English and French plosives, regardless of whether they are released or not, compared to old Koreans. Based on these results, we propose that more direct contact with English than two decades ago has led to more exposure to its spoken usages and that less direct contact with French has led word-final French postvocalic plosives to be perceived more like their English counterparts in vowel insertion by Koreans. It is concluded that the present study suggests the role of sociolinguistic environments over time in loanword adaptation.

Keywords: diachronic variation; Korean adaptation; sociolinguistic environments; vowel insertion

Funding statement: This work is supported by a 2014 Hongik University Research Fund.

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my sincere thanks to Jihyun Chung who helped with data collection and to Aditi Lahiri and two anonymous reviewers for comments and feedback. Earlier versions of the present study were presented at the conference in honor of Annie Rialland at Sorbonne University in 2014 and at the 18th ICPhS conference held at Glasgow, England in 2015. All errors remain my own.

References

Arakawa, Sōbē. 1977. Gairaigo jiten. [Loanword dictionary]. Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten.Search in Google Scholar

Best, Catherine T. 1995. A direct realist view of cross-language speech. In Winifred Strange (eds.), Speech perception and linguistic experience, 171–204. Baltimore, MD: York Press.Search in Google Scholar

Broselow, Ellen & Hye-Bae Park. 1995. Mora conservation in second language prosody. In John Archibald (eds.), Phonological acquisition and phonological theory, 151–168. Hillsdale: Erlbaum.Search in Google Scholar

Bureau of International Information Program. 2012. Peace Corps – 50 Years of Promoting Friendship. U.S. Department of States, Seoul, Korea: The US Embassy in Korea.Search in Google Scholar

Chu, Kyung-Hui. 2013. Kwuke chinhung wuntongeuy ilonchek kipanyenkwu [Study of theoretical bases in Korean promotion movement]. Seoul: NAKL.Search in Google Scholar

Chung, Chay-whan. 2013. Hangeuley sitaylul yelta: Hepanghwu hankulhankwhoy yenkwu [Open to the period of the Korean language: A study of the Korean Language Society’s activities]. Seoul: Kyunginmwunwhasa.Search in Google Scholar

Clements, G. Nick & Elizabeth Hume. 1996. The internal organization of speech sounds. In John A. Goldsmith (eds.), The Handbook of Phonological Theory, 245-306. Oxford: Blackwell.10.1111/b.9780631201267.1996.00009.xSearch in Google Scholar

Crawford, Clifford James. 2009. Adaptation and transmission in Japanese loanword phonology. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University PhD dissertation.Search in Google Scholar

Dell, François. 1973. Les reègles et les sons. Hermann, Paris. (English edition: 1980. Generative Phonology and French Phonology. trans. by Catherine Cullen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.)Search in Google Scholar

Dell, François. 1995. Consonant clusters and phonological syllables in French. Lingua 9. 1–26.10.1016/0024-3841(95)90099-3Search in Google Scholar

Hamann, Silke & David W. L. Li. 2015. Adaptation of English onset clusters across time in Hong Kong Cantonese: The role of the perception grammar. (under review).Search in Google Scholar

Haugen, Einar. 1950. The analysis of linguistic borrowing. Language 26. 210–231.10.2307/410058Search in Google Scholar

Hirano, Hideyuki. 1994. A constraint-based approach to Korean loanwords. Language Research 30. 707–739.Search in Google Scholar

Hock, Hans Henrich & Brian D. Joseph. 1996. Language history, language change, and language relationship: An introduction to historical and comparative linguistics. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Search in Google Scholar

Hualde, José. 1993. Phonologically unmotivated changes in language contact: Spanish borrowings in Basque. Folia Linguistica 27. 1–25.10.1515/flin.1993.27.1-2.1Search in Google Scholar

Hualde, José. 1999. Patterns of correspondence in the adaptation of Spanish borrowings in Basque. In Steve S. Chang, Lily Liaw & Josef Ruppenhofer (eds.), Proceedings of the 25th annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society, 348–358. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Linguistics Society.10.3765/bls.v25i1.1196Search in Google Scholar

Hyman, Larry. 1970. The role of borrowing in the justification of phonological grammars. Studies in African Linguistics 1. 1–48.Search in Google Scholar

Iverson, Gregory K. & Ahrong Lee. 2006. Perception of contrast in Korean loanword adaptation. Korean Linguistics 13. 49–87.10.1075/kl.13.03gkiSearch in Google Scholar

Jun, Sun-Ah. 1993. The phonetics and phonology of Korean prosody. The Ohio State University dissertation.Search in Google Scholar

Jun, Sun-Ah. 1994. The status of the lenis stop voicing rule. In Young-Key Kim-Renaud (eds.), Theoretical issues in Korean linguistics, 101–114. Stanford: CSLI.Search in Google Scholar

Jung, Sung-Ki. 2008. Peace corps volunteers to reunite in Korea (A news article in the Korea Times). Seoul: The Korea Times.Search in Google Scholar

Kang, Yoonjung. 2003. Perceptual similarity in loanword adaptation: English postvocalic word-final stops in Korean. Phonology 20. 219–273.10.1017/S0952675703004524Search in Google Scholar

Kang, Yoonjung, Michael Kenstowicz & Chiyuki Ito. 2008. Hybrid loans: A study of English loanwords transmitted to Korean via Japanese. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 17. 299–316.10.1007/s10831-008-9029-5Search in Google Scholar

Kenstowicz, Michael. 2003. The role of perception in loanword phonology. Studies in African Linguistics 32. 95–112.10.32473/sal.v32i1.107344Search in Google Scholar

Kim, Chin-Wu. 1965. On the autonomy of the tensity feature in stop classification (with the special reference to Korean stops). Word 21. 339–359.10.1080/00437956.1965.11435434Search in Google Scholar

Kim, Hyunsoon. 1997. The phonological representation of affricates: Evidence from Korean and other languages. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, PhD dissertation.Search in Google Scholar

Kim, Hyunsoon. 1998. A phonetic characterization of release and nonrelease: The case of Korean and English. Language Research 34. 347–368.Search in Google Scholar

Kim, Hyunsoon. 1999. The place of articulation of the Korean affricates revisited. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 8. 313–347.10.1023/A:1008331010694Search in Google Scholar

Kim, Hyunsoon. 2001a. A phonetically-based account of phonological assibilation. Phonology 18. 81–108. Cambridge University.10.1017/S095267570100402XSearch in Google Scholar

Kim, Hyunsoon. 2001b. The place of articulation of the Korean plain affricate in intervocalic position: An articulatory and acoustic Study. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 31. 229–257.10.1017/S0025100301002055Search in Google Scholar

Kim, Hyunsoon. 2004. Stroboscopic-cine MRI data on Korean coronal plosives and affricates: Implications for their place of articulation as alveolar. Phonetica 61. 234–251.10.1159/000084160Search in Google Scholar

Kim, Hyunsoon. 2008. Loanword adaptation between Japanese and Korean: Evidence for L1 feature-driven perception. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 17. 331–346.10.1007/s10831-008-9034-8Search in Google Scholar

Kim, Hyunsoon. 2009. Korean adaptation of English affricates and fricatives in a feature-driven model of loanword adaptation. In Andrea Calabrese & W. Leo Wetzel (eds.), Loan phonology, 155–180. Philadelphia & Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.10.1075/cilt.307.06kimSearch in Google Scholar

Kim, Hyunsoon. 2011. Kyungsang Korean subjects’ perception of Japanese pitch-accent. Proceedings of the 17th international congress of phonetic sciences, 1058–1061. Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong.Search in Google Scholar

Kim, Hyunsoon. 2012. Gradual tongue movements in Korean Palatalization as coarticulation: New evidence from stroboscopic cine-MRI and acoustic data. Journal of Phonetics 40. 67–81.10.1016/j.wocn.2011.07.004Search in Google Scholar

Kim, Hyunsoon. 2013. Seoul Korean subjects’ perception of Japanese pitch-accent: Evidence for the absence of tonogenesis in Korean. In Bjarke Freliesvig & Peter Sells (eds.), Japanese/Korean Linguistics, vol. 20, 217- 232. Stanford University: CSLI Publications.Search in Google Scholar

Kim, Hyunsoon. 2014a. An L1 grammar-driven model of loanword adaptation: Evidence from Korean. Korean Linguistics 16. 144–187. Philadelphia & Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.10.1075/kl.16.2.03kimSearch in Google Scholar

Kim, Hyunsoon. 2014b. The role of F0 in Korean speakers’ categorization of Japanese plosives: Implications for Korean laryngeal features. (submitted).Search in Google Scholar

Kim, Hyunsoon. 2017. Korean speakers’ perception of Japanese geminates: Evidence for an L1 grammar-driven borrowing process. In Kubozono Haruo (Ed.), The Phonetics and Phonology of Geminate Consonants, 340-369. Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Kim, Hyunsoon, Kiyoshi Honda & Shinji Maeda. 2005. Stroboscopic-cine MRI study of the phasing between the tongue and the larynx in the Korean three-way phonation contrast. Journal of Phonetics 33. 1–26.10.1016/j.wocn.2004.06.001Search in Google Scholar

Kim, Hyunsoon & Allard Jongman. 1996. Acoustic and perceptual evidence for complete neutralization of manner of articulation in Korean. Journal of Phonetics 24. 295–312.10.1006/jpho.1996.0016Search in Google Scholar

Kim, Hyunsoon & Junyeop Kim. 2016. A perception study on old vs. young Koreans, vowel insertion after word-final English and French postvocalic plosives. Ms.Search in Google Scholar

Kim, Hyunsoon, Shinji Maeda & Kiyoshi Honda. 2010. Invariant articulatory bases of the features [tense] and [spread glottis] in Korean: New stroboscopic cine-MRI data. Journal of Phonetics 38. 90–108.10.1016/j.wocn.2009.03.003Search in Google Scholar

Kim, Hyunsoon, Shinji Maeda & Kiyoshi Honda. 2015. ePGG, airflow and acoustic data on glottal opening in Korean plosives. In Proceedings of the 18th international congress of phonetic sciences, ed. by the Scottish Consortium for ICPhS 2015, Paper number 0415, 4 pages. Glasgow: The University of Glasgow.Search in Google Scholar

Kim, Hyunsoon, Shinji Maeda, Kiyoshi Honda & Crevier-Buchman Lise. 2016. The mechanism and representation of Korean three-way phonation contrast: EPGG, Pio, airflow and acoustic data. Presented at the 15th Laboratory Phonology, Cornell University Ithaca, NY. (submitted).Search in Google Scholar

Kim-Renaud, Young-Key. 1974. Korean consonantal phonology. University of Hawaii dissertation.Search in Google Scholar

Labov, William. 1972. Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Search in Google Scholar

Labov, William. 2001. Principles of linguistic change. Volume 2: Social Factors. Oxford: Blackwell.Search in Google Scholar

Labov, William. 2007. Transmission and diffusion. Language 83. 344–387.10.1353/lan.2007.0082Search in Google Scholar

LaCharité, Darlene & Carole Paradis. 2005. Category preservation and proximity versus phonetic approximation in loanword adaptation. Linguistic Inquiry 36. 223–258.10.1162/0024389053710666Search in Google Scholar

Ladefoged, Peter. 1999. American English. In the International Phonetic Association (ed.), Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A guide to the use of the international phonetic alphabet, 41–44. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/9780511807954Search in Google Scholar

Ladefoged, Peter. 2001. A course in phonetics. USA: Hartcourt College Publishers.Search in Google Scholar

Leclerc, Jacques. 1989. Qu’est-ce que LA LANGUE? Quebec: Syntheèse.Search in Google Scholar

Lev-Ari, Shiri & Sharon Peperkamp. 2014. An experimental study of the role of social factors in language change: The case of loanword adaptations. Laboratory Phonology 5. 379–401.10.1515/lp-2014-0013Search in Google Scholar

Miao, Ruiqin. 2005. Loanword adaptation in Mandarin Chinese: Perceptual, phonological and sociolinguistic factors. Stony Brook University, PhD dissertation.Search in Google Scholar

Ministry of Education. 1986. Woylayephyokipeyp [How to borrow foreign sounds]. Seoul: Ministry of Education.Search in Google Scholar

NAKL (The National Academy of the Korean Language). 1991. Oylaye sayong silthaycosa: 1990 nyento [Survey of the state of loanword usage: 1990]. Seoul: NAKL.Search in Google Scholar

NAKL (The National Academy of the Korean Language). 1995. Nampwukhan oylayeuy pikyoyenkwu [Comparison of loanwords in South and North Korea]. Seoul: NAKL.Search in Google Scholar

Nam, Ji-Young & Bruce Southard. 1994. Orthographic representation and resyllabification of English loan words in Korean. Language and Speech 37(3). 259–281.10.1177/002383099403700304Search in Google Scholar

NIKL (The National Institute of the Korean Language). 2011. Woylayephyokipeyp [How to borrow foreign sounds]. Seoul: NIKL.Search in Google Scholar

Paradis, Carole & LaCharité Darlene. 1997. Preservation and minimality in loanword adaptation. Journal of Linguistics 33. 379–430.10.1017/S0022226797006786Search in Google Scholar

Paradis, Carole & Antoine Tremblay. 2009. Nondistinctive features in loanword adaptation: The unimportance of English Aspiration in Mandarin Chinese phoneme categoraization. In Andrea Calabrese & W. Leo Wetzel (eds.), Loan phonology, 211–224. Philadelphia & Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.10.1075/cilt.307.09parSearch in Google Scholar

Peperkamp, Sharon. 2005. A psycholinguistic theory of loanword adaptations. Proceedings of the 30th annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society, 341–352. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Linguistics Society.10.3765/bls.v30i1.919Search in Google Scholar

Peperkamp, Sharon & Emmanuel Dupoux. 2003. Reinterpreting loanword adaptations: The role of perception. In Maria-Josep Solé, Daniel Recasens & Joaquin Romero (eds.), Proceedings of the 15th international congress of phonetic sciences, 367–370. Barcelona: Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona.Search in Google Scholar

Polivanov, Evgenij D. 1931. La perception des sons d’une langue étrangère [The perception of non-native language sounds]. Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 4. 79–96.Search in Google Scholar

Polivanov, Evgenij D. 1974. The subjective nature of the perceptions of language sounds. In Evgenij D. Polivanov (eds.), Selected works: Articles on general linguistics, 223–237. The Hague: Mouton.10.1515/9783110815627Search in Google Scholar

Poplack, Shana & David Sankoff. 1984. Borrowing: The synchrony of integration. Linguistics 22. 99–135.10.1515/ling.1984.22.1.99Search in Google Scholar

Poplack, Shana, David Sankoff & Christopher Miller. 1988. The social correlates and linguistic processes of lexical borrowing and assimilation. Linguistics 26. 47–104.10.1515/ling.1988.26.1.47Search in Google Scholar

Rhee, Seok-Chae & Yoo-Kyung Choi. 2001. Yengechayongeuy moumsapipey tayhan thongky- eycek kwanchalkwa ku uyuy. [A statistical observation of vowel insertion in English loan-words in Korean and its significance.]. Studies in Phonetics, Phonology and Morphology 7. 153–176. Seoul: Hankwukmunhwasa.Search in Google Scholar

Silva, David J. 1992. The phonetics and phonology of stop lenition in Korean. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, PhD dissertation.Search in Google Scholar

Silva, David J. 2006. Acoustic evidence for the emergence of tonal contrast in contemporary Korean. Phonology 23. 287–308.10.1017/S0952675706000911Search in Google Scholar

Silverman, Daniel. 1992. Multiple scansions in loanword phonology: Evidence from Cantonese. Phonology 9. 289–328.10.1017/S0952675700001627Search in Google Scholar

Skaličková, A. 1960. The Korean consonants. Prague: CSAV, Rozpray.Search in Google Scholar

Smith, Jennifer L. 2006. Loan phonology is not all perception: Evidence from Japanese loan doublets. In Timothy J. Vance & Kimberly A. Jones (eds.), Japanese/Korean Linguistics 14, 63-74. CSLI.Search in Google Scholar

Steriade, Donca. 2001. Directional asymmetries in place assimilation: A perceptual account. In Elizabeth Hume & Keith Johnson (eds.), The role of speech perception in phonology, 219–250. San Diego: Academic Press.10.1163/9789004454095_013Search in Google Scholar

Tranel, Bernard. 1987. The sounds of French: An introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511620645Search in Google Scholar

Trubetzkoy, Nikolai S. 1939. Grundzüge der Phonologie. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. (English edition: 1969). Principles of phonology. trans. by Christine A. M. Baltaxe. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press.Search in Google Scholar

Weinrich, Uriel. 1968. Languages in contact. The Hague: Mouton.Search in Google Scholar

Yip, Moria. 2006. The symbiosis between perception and grammar in loanword phonology. Lingua 116. 950–975.10.1016/j.lingua.2005.05.007Search in Google Scholar

Received: 2015-12-8
Accepted: 2016-10-3
Published Online: 2017-8-1

© 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Editorial
  2. Editorial
  3. Phonetics & Phonology
  4. Acoustic correlates of word stress: A cross-linguistic survey
  5. A two-decade-interval variation in vowel insertion after word-final English and French postvocalic plosives in Korean adaptation: A sociolinguistic account
  6. Methodological issues in the study of word stress correlates
  7. Morphology & Syntax
  8. From the past into the present: From case frames to semantic frames
  9. Valency and expectation in Bantu applicatives
  10. Semantics & Pragmatics
  11. Semantic values as latent parameters: Testing a fixed threshold hypothesis for cardinal readings of few & many
  12. The Role of Prosody in the Identification of Persian Sentence Types: Declarative or Wh-question?
  13. Language Acquisition & Language Learning
  14. Individual differences in second language speech perception across tasks and contrasts: The case of English vowel contrasts by Korean learners
  15. Language Documentation & Typology
  16. Topological Relations in Pohnpeian
  17. Psycholinguistics & Neurolinguistics
  18. Incremental parsing in a continuous dynamical system: sentence processing in Gradient Symbolic Computation
  19. Sociolinguistics & Anthropological Linguistics
  20. Frequency effects over the lifespan: a case study of Attenborough’s r’s
  21. Is like like like?: Evaluating the same variant across multiple variables
  22. The linguist’s Drosophila: Experiments in language change
  23. Seseo, ceceo, and distinción in Andalusian Spanish: Free variation or sociolinguistic variation?
https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2016-0076
Keywords for this article
diachronic variation; Korean adaptation; sociolinguistic environments; vowel insertion

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Editorial
  2. Editorial
  3. Phonetics & Phonology
  4. Acoustic correlates of word stress: A cross-linguistic survey
  5. A two-decade-interval variation in vowel insertion after word-final English and French postvocalic plosives in Korean adaptation: A sociolinguistic account
  6. Methodological issues in the study of word stress correlates
  7. Morphology & Syntax
  8. From the past into the present: From case frames to semantic frames
  9. Valency and expectation in Bantu applicatives
  10. Semantics & Pragmatics
  11. Semantic values as latent parameters: Testing a fixed threshold hypothesis for cardinal readings of few & many
  12. The Role of Prosody in the Identification of Persian Sentence Types: Declarative or Wh-question?
  13. Language Acquisition & Language Learning
  14. Individual differences in second language speech perception across tasks and contrasts: The case of English vowel contrasts by Korean learners
  15. Language Documentation & Typology
  16. Topological Relations in Pohnpeian
  17. Psycholinguistics & Neurolinguistics
  18. Incremental parsing in a continuous dynamical system: sentence processing in Gradient Symbolic Computation
  19. Sociolinguistics & Anthropological Linguistics
  20. Frequency effects over the lifespan: a case study of Attenborough’s r’s
  21. Is like like like?: Evaluating the same variant across multiple variables
  22. The linguist’s Drosophila: Experiments in language change
  23. Seseo, ceceo, and distinción in Andalusian Spanish: Free variation or sociolinguistic variation?
Sign up now to receive a 20% welcome discount
Institutional Access
How does access work?
Have an idea on how to improve our website?
Please write us.
© 2026 De Gruyter Brill
Downloaded on 6.2.2026 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/lingvan-2016-0076/html?lang=en
Scroll to top button