Ji-eun Kim

Ji-eun Kim, Volker Dellwo

Korean aegyo is a socially recognized childlike speaking style used predominantly in romantic interactions among adults. This study examined vowel space modification in aegyo by analyzing formant frequencies from twelve Seoul Korean speakers who produced identical scripts in aegyo and non-aegyo styles. Results show that aegyo speech features a significant increase in F1 values across vowels and selective fronting of front vowels, leading to vowel space expansion but mainly a shift to higher F1. These findings suggest that adult speakers stylize childlike speech by imitating the shorter vocal tract of children, mainly through global vowel lowering and partial fronting.

Ji-eun Kim

Purpose: This study investigates the transcription principles underlying Huìtóngguǎnxì Huáyíyìyǔ (HHY), a series of multilingual glossaries compiled by the Ming government between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries for interpreter training. The study treats HHY not as a collection of isolated language materials, but as a coherent multilingual transcription system representing spoken forms of non-Chinese languages through Chinese characters. Methods: A substantial portion of HHY was digitized and aligned with Chinese phonological categories. Previous reconstructions of individual language sections were critically reviewed and integrated into a unified comparative database. The analysis focuses on cross-linguistic regularities in Main Transcription (MT) and Supplementary Transcription (ST) across eight language sections. Results: MT generally represents sounds compatible with the Chinese syllable structure of the period, whereas ST mainly encodes phonetic features less compatible with Chinese phonology. The analysis further shows that Chinese phonological categories were used more flexibly in foreign-language transcription than previously assumed. HHY therefore functioned as a relatively systematic method of phonetic approximation rather than a direct projection of Chinese phonology onto non-Chinese languages. Conclusion: HHY can be analyzed as an internally structured transcription system rather than merely as a collection of glossaries. More broadly, the study demonstrates that historical transcription systems can provide valuable evidence for historical phonology, particularly for under-documented Asian languages with limited historical records.