The role of faithfulness in imperfect overlapping in Korean blends: A nonce word study

Abstract

This paper reports on a nonce word study of imperfect overlapping in Korean blends where speakers rated blends with various pairs of segments in a possible overlapping position (e.g. kata+pami = katami). The results show that Korean speakers prefer blends with segments with a laryngeal feature difference (/p/ vs. /p^h/) as overlapping segments in comparison to pairs with a place (/p/ and /k/) or manner (/p/ and /m/) feature differences. Moreover, Korean speakers preferred blends that retained certain segments. When fortis/aspirated stops are in competition with lenis stops (e.g. kat^ha+tami), the resultant blends with fortis/aspirated stops are rated higher (kat^hami is rated higher than katami). This paper argues that these preferences arise from the faithfulness rankings required in the phonology of Korean; they do not require a construction-specific grammar just for blends.