Temporal Variation Due to Tense vs. Lax Consonants in Korean

Many languages show reverse durational variation between preceding vowel and following voiced/voiceless (lax/tense) consonants. This study investigated the likely effects of phoneme type (tense vs. lax) on the timing structure (duration of syllable, word, phrase and sentence) of Korean. Three rates of speech (fast, normal, slow) applied to stimuli with the target word /a-Ca/ where /C/ is one of /p, p', $p^h$/. The type (tense/lax) of /C/ caused marked inverse durational variations in the two syllables /a/ and /Ca/ and highly different durational ratios between them. Words with /p', $p^h$/ were significantly longer than that with /p/, which contrasts with many other languages where such pairs of words have a similar duration. The differentials between words remained up to the phrase and sentence level, but in general the higher linguistic units did not statistically differ within each level. Thus, the phrase is suggested as a compensatory unit of phoneme type effects in Korean. Different rates did not affect the general tendency. Distribution of time variations (from normal to fast and slow) to each syllable (/a/ and /Ca/) was also observed.