The purpose of this paper is to account for English voicing assimilation in obstruent cluster and Korean voicing assimilation in the intervocalic position with Optimality Theory (OT). It has been assumed that there are regular patterns in both languag...
The purpose of this paper is to account for English voicing assimilation in obstruent cluster and Korean voicing assimilation in the intervocalic position with Optimality Theory (OT). It has been assumed that there are regular patterns in both languages. In English, voiced and voiceless obstruents are contrastive while obstruents in Korean which are voiceless undergo voicing agreement in the intervocalic position. Variations between the two languages have been explained by applying the same constraints. It is shown how OT can be applied in detail to decide the rank of contraints considered for both languages.