Prosody and semantics of the focus particles always and only in Korean: Theoretical implications from a perception experiment

This study sheds light on the relationship between the prosodic features and semantic functions of the Korean focus particles (FPs) hangsang ‘always’ and ocik ‘only’. Based on a production experiment, Nambu and Lee (forthcoming) argue that different phonetic realizations of hangsang and ocik reflect their semantic distinction, supporting Beaver and Clark’s (2008) Quasi/Free/Conventional Theory. We conducted a perception experiment to examine the extent to which listeners are conscious of prosodic cues related to hangsang and ocik with different environments. Following the production experiment, the results of the experiments show that ocik has rigid prosodic behavior as conventional association, in contrast to hangsang, whose prosodic behavior, which reflects free association, depends on contextual conditions, supporting Beaver and Clark’s (2003, 2008) claim