경상도 방언의 성문 파열음과 성조

Abstract

In this article, I explore tones and prevocalic glottal stops in Kyongsang dialects of Korean. I first discuss tonal patterns of Kyongsang dialects. From the examination of the tone data, it was observed that the presence of prevocalic glottal stops is tightly related to the tone of the following vowel. Specifically, prevocalic glottal stops occur only before a vowel with a high tone. A general implication of the finding is then discussed. In so doing, I will claim that the present finding(i.e. a high tone cooccurs with a glottal stop) is a natural pattern, based on the assumption that it is natural that the higher the subglottal pressure, the higher the pitch. In addition, I performed a spectrographic experiment which confirms the presence of prevocalic glottal stops in Kyongsang dialects, although the release of glottal stops is not so prominent.