한국언어과학회

The current study explores the Korean sibilants produced by 42 Jeju Korean speakers from three different age groups and genders by analyzing the spectral peak frequency(SPF). The results indicated that as the speakers’ age decreased, they pronounced the sounds at a more anterior area in the oral cavity; furthermore, female speakers were also found to produce sibilants more anteriorly than male speakers. However, when considering the phonation type and the vowel contexts, results showed different characteristics according to gender. Female speakers tended to produce a more fronted variant before the vowel /i/, while male speakers tended to produce it before the /a/. In particular, female speakers had a higher SPF for the lax affricate before the vowel /i/, but males showed a higher SPF for the tense fricative before the vowel /a/. Thus, the fronted features of sibilants were not consistently observed in Jeju Korean across the vowel contexts as a function of gender and age. The current study results demonstrate that the gender- and the age-related fronted variants are accounted for by not only a physiological difference, but a social-indexical marker to represent gender identity.