This paper aims to explore how phonological complexity is neurally realized in an overt production task of Korean vowels. Another aim was to find out whether brain activation signals can be a potential measure of phonological complexity. Functional Ma...
This paper aims to explore how phonological complexity is neurally realized in an overt production task of Korean vowels. Another aim was to find out whether brain activation signals can be a potential measure of phonological complexity. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) scanning was conducted on 10 native Korean speakers as they repeated acoustically presented non-lexical bisyllabic speech sounds beginning with ti- in which I manipulated articulatory complexity measured by vocalic durations (i.e., Complex 1: /ye/ >> Complex 2: /we/ >> Simple: /i/). Greater activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus (or Broca’s area) was found for Complex 1 stimuli relative to Complex 2 stimuli as well as for the Complex 2 utterances relative to Simple utterances. Given that Broca’s area is responsible for articulatory planning and/or phonological processing, more phonologically complex syllables will demand more articulo-phonological planning or rehearsal, these findings suggest that phonological complexity is mirrored in the neural processing of different phonological representations. Also, the articulation of relatively longer y-onglides than w-onglides were found to elicit more Broca’s area activation, which is in support of the hypothesis that fMRI signals can be an alternative complexity measure.