Chapter 2 discusses some of the most salient and yet persistently controversial and significant phenomena in Korean phonology: lenis obstruent voicing, stop neutralization, consonant cluster simplification, consonant assimilation, consonantal fortition, Saisiot, vowel deletion and insertion, vowel devoicing and assimilation, monophthongization, vowel harmony, and sound symbolism. The chapter focuses on the Seoul Standard Dialect. One salient and recurrent theme is the theoretical issue of the relative strength of each sound, both inherent and in its environment. Some sounds are held to be “stronger” than others; we see that these sounds are exploited not only in sound symbolism but also in the application or non-application of certain rules. Boundaries play a significant role in Korean phonology and are analyzed as prosodic units in contemporary analyses. The Korean-specific basis of articulation, particularly obligatory unreleasing, results in many interesting weakening effects, including consonant cluster simplification, various assimilatory phenomena, and various consonant and vowel insertions by backward generalizations.

Chapter 2 uses a variety of investigative activities to guide readers through an exploration of the sounds and articulations of the world’s languages and the linguistic rules that govern their appearances. It begins with an overview of the acoustic characteristics of speech sounds, which are then employed in a discussion of the articulation apparatus. Throughout, students are directed to engage in their own investigations with the material via the Discover Activities. Various data from a variety of languages are provided to illustrate different phonological rules, and the techniques linguists use to discover them through analysis. These insights are then transferred to a discussion of transformations and processes that complicate phonological systems.

A critical review of models of speech-motor control serves to illustrate the ongoing problem of elaborating an interface between speech and concepts of phonemes or “syllables” as groups of phonemes.The problem extends to neuro- and psycho-linguistic models. In addressing the issue of“the interface that never was,” several lines of evidence are presented that demonstrate syllable-size cycles as basic sequencing units of articulation, muscle activation, and representation in sequence memory. The evidence also suggests that a conceptualization of speech in terms of linguistic-type+/– features that are taken to be timed in letter-like bundles have oriented models, but fundamentally misrepresent both the timing and the graded control of muscles and articulatory motions. Instrumental records of graded control support coherent syllable-size cycles as basic sequencing units and evidence is discussed with a view on how syllable-internal timing can relate to intrinsic properties of relaxing tissues which do not imply a sequential control of closing and opening motions within a motion cycle.