Coreano (Clements y Hume, 1995)

En las palabras del presente corpus se muestran tres distintos fonemas /th, s, t/. Según Goldsmith
(2011), en el coreano estos fonemas son representados fonéticamente por [t], un sonido que
comparte los rasgos pertinentes [+coronal] y [+anterior]. Este sonido se muestra en el habla
lenta.

Para el habla rápida surge un fenómeno llamado “neutralización”. “Kim and Jongman (1996),
for example, reported that coda neutralization (i.e. word-final obstruents (e.g. /t, th, s/ are all
phonetically realized as [t]) is complete in Korean.” (Goldsmith, 2011). La neutralización
“consiste en la eliminación de la oposición (diferencia) entre dos fonemas en un determinado
contexto, de manera que fonéticamente suenen igual, aunque se trate de la realización de dos
fonemas distintos” es la artífice de que el sonido

Like dissimilation, simple neutralization can be characterized in terms o f node

delinking. We illustrate with a particularly interesting example from Korean. In this
language, the three-way phonemic contrast among plain voiceless, aspirated, and
“tense” (or glottalized) obstruents is neutralized to a plain voiceless unreleased stop in
final position and preconsonantally (i.e., in the syllable coda). In addition, the coronal
obstruents /t th t′ č čh č′ s s′ / and (at least for some speakers) /h/ are neutralized to [t]
in the same contexts. In faster or more casual speech styles, however, the coronals
may totally assimilate to a following stop under conditions which appear to vary among
speakers. The two styles are illustrated by the following examples (Martin 1951; Cho
1990; Kim 1990):16

Notice that the neutralization rule illustrated in the slower speech styles applies to the f
eatures [anterior] and [continuant] which, in the feature organization of Sagey (1986),
for example, are widely separated: [anterior] is dominated by [coronal], whereas
[continuant] is immediately dominated by the root node. To achieve this effect in terms
of a single operation in accordance with principle (4), the rule must delink the root node
of the coronal obstruent.17 The resulting empty skeletal position is assigned the
features of unreleased [t], the unmarked consonant, by default. Th e following
derivation of the slower speech forms illustrates the analysis of neutralization; note that
parenthesized nodes are automatically interpolated to preserve wellformedness (Sagey
1986). (Irrelevant structure is
omitted.)

In faster speech, the default rule is preempted by a rule spreading the root node of the
second consonant onto the skeletal position of the first.
Neutralization rules provide a further criterion f or feature organization: since only
single nodes may undergo delinking, any features that delink as a group must
constitute a single node on an independent tier of its own.