The [voice] system of Korean stops revisited with special reference to the aspirated-lax merger

Korean stops are considered unique because they have three voiceless stops. Arguing against the unique system, Kim and Duanmu (2004) propose the system of Korean stops that underlying “tense” stops are regular voiceless unaspirated stops, and “lax” stops are regular voiced stops. Their analysis has some shortcomings in that the current sound change in Korean, merging of aspirated and lax stops in initial position, was not taken into consideration. In the present study, their [voice] system is revisited by providing merging of aspirated and lax stops and phonetic implementations of tense stops. I suggest that the nature of the sound change can be better understood in the [voice] system than the [tense] system. Otherwise it remains a puzzle, in particular, why lax stops are correlated with low tones, and why they become heavily aspirated.