Perception of lenis and aspirated stops in Seoul Korean by younger and older male and female listeners*

Traditionally it has been understood that the aspirated and lenis stops in Seoul Korean are distinguished primarily by voice onset time (VOT) and secondarily by other cues such as the fundamental frequency (F0) of the following vowel. However, recent studies on stop production have shown that the aspirated and lenis stops are currently merging in VOT and that they are now differentiated primarily by F0. In the present study, we examined whether the currently reported change in the production domain would be also found in the perception domain. To this end, an auditory identification task was conducted using speech materials of varying VOT and F0 values with young and older male and female Seoul listeners. Results revealed that all listener groups used both VOT and F0 to distinguish the lenis vs. aspirated stops but they used the F0 cue more reliably than the VOT cue in discriminating the stop contrast. The effects of gender and age were found only in the VOT cue (i.e., not in the F0 cue), with the greatest VOT cue weight in older males and the smallest in young females, which is in line with recent production studies.