Articulatory Strategies under Lexical Contrast: With Reference to Hyperarticulation in Korean Stops

Prior studies on hyperarticulation of voice onset time (VOT) in word-initial voiceless stops have yielded conflicting findings regarding the primary lexical factor influencing such articulatory enhancement: some highlight the role of neighborhood density, while others emphasize the presence of minimal pairs differing in a specific phonetic cue. To clarify this issue, I analyzed VOT data from 45 native speakers of Korean, focusing on the relationship between cue-specific minimal pair presence and neighborhood density. Using linear mixed-effects modeling, I found that the presence of a minimal pair involving a different type of voiceless stop significantly predicted longer VOTs, while neighborhood density had no significant effect. These findings suggest that in Korean, cue-specific lexical competition exerts a more robust influence on hyperarticulation than general phonological similarity. The results contribute to a cross-linguistic understanding of how lexical structure shapes fine-grained phonetic realization, particularly in languages that exhibit three-way laryngeal contrasts as in Korean.