Affixation effects on word-final coda deletion in spontaneous Seoul Korean speech

This study investigated the patterns of coda deletion in spontaneous Seoul Korean speech. More specifically, the current study focused on three factors in promoting coda deletion, namely, word position, consonant type, and morpheme type. The results revealed that, first, coda deletion frequently occurred when affixes were attached to the ends of words, rather than in affixes in word-internal positions or in roots. Second, alveolar consonants [n] and [l] in the coda positions of high-frequency affixes [nɨn] and [lɨl] were most likely to be deleted. Additionally, regarding affix reduction in the word-final position, all subjects seemed to depend on this articulatory strategy to a similar degree. In sum, the current study found that affixes without primary semantic content in spontaneous speech tend to undergo the process of reduction, favoring the occurrence of specific pronunciation variants.