Experimental phonetic study of the syllable duration of Korean with respect to the positional effect

摘要

The aim of the paper is to describe the prosodic structure of Korean related to the syllable duration varying with its positional difference. An attempt is made to analyze and describe the concrete correlation between the syllable lengthening and its position in the utterance at the initial and final positions. Using the syllable [na] at the final and initial position of a prosodic phrase in the Korean version of 'the North Wind and the Sun', it has found that the ratio of phrase final versus phrase initial syllable lengthening was approximately 1.8:1 for 4 subjects taking part in the test. In the case of nonsense data, the authors found that the ratio was approximately 1.6:1 for 2 out of 3 subjects. The results of the study might indicate that Korean tends to have a high rate of final lengthening. One can tentatively classify it, therefore, as a stress-timed language. Still, there is no denying that further studies should be done before one can be absolutely certain about the classification of languages along the dichotomy scale.