The Duration-based Analysis of English /s/ in Korean Loanword Phonology = The Duration-based Analysis of English /s/ in Korean Loanword Phonology

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The present paper argues for the duration-based analysis to explain the split borrowing pattern of English /s/ into Korean. When the English phoneme /s/ is borrowed into Korean, it is realized as either lax /s/ or tense /s*/ based on its environment: English initial /s/ occurring in a cluster is mapped onto Korean lax /s/ (English [s] in smile as Korean [s]), whereas English singleton /s/ is mapped onto Korean tense /s*/ (English [s] in sale as Korean [s*]). To account for this split borrowing, two accounts have been proposed: the duration-based analysis and the laryngeal-based analysis. This paper provides a critical evaluation of these two accounts by identifying their problems and limitations. In the end, we argue for the duration-based account over the other by showing how the seeming problems for this approach can be resolved as rather supporting evidence for the role of duration in the split borrowing.