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The Korean Association for the Study of English Language and Linguistics
[ Article ]
Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 26, No. 0, pp.329-362
ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print) 2586-7474 (Online)
Print publication date 28 Feb 2026
Received 11 Sep 2025 Revised 12 Jan 2026 Accepted 12 Jan 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.26..202602.329

Speech Rate Effects on the Phonetic Realization of Epenthetic Vowels in English Loanwords in Korean

Hyunjin Lee
Lecturer, Department of Language and Information Pusan National University 2 Busandaehak-ro 63beon-gil, Geumjeong-gu, Busan, Korea, Tel: +82-51-512-0311 hjlee66904@gmail.com


© 2026 KASELL All rights reserved
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

This study investigates the phonetic realization of epenthetic vowels in English loanwords in Korean under different speech rate conditions, based on read speech. Thirty native speakers of Seoul Korean participated in a production experiment in which they read sentences at normal and fast rates. Both epenthetic /ɨ, i/ and their lexical counterparts were analyzed for F1, F2, and duration values. The results revealed that epenthetic and lexical vowels did not differ significantly in their formant values or durations at either speech rate. While vowel durations shortened overall in fast speech, no evidence of centralization was observed for epenthetic and lexical /ɨ/, suggesting that it maintains stable phonetic properties across rates. Gender, syllable position and syllable structure exerted significant effects on vowel duration, but these applied equally to epenthetic and lexical vowels. These findings indicate that epenthetic vowels are fully integrated into the phonological system and function as phonological segments with defined phonetic targets, rather than as transitional vowels in read speech.

Keywords:

English loanwords in Korean, vowel epenthesis, speech rate

Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this work was presented at the Summer 2025 Meeting of the Korean Association of Language Sciences (KALS).

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