The lexical and phonological role of stress or prominence in Korean is relatively small compared to stress languages such as English since stress does not have a distinctive function in this language. Previous studies (Lee 1974, Yu 1989, Jun 1992, and Jun 1995) claim that stress placement within a word is dependent on vowel length and syllable weight, and that the first heavy syllable attracts stress in Korean. This paper presents some of the results of an investigation into how stress or prominence is perceived in the productions of speakers of Standard Korean. We examined whether a certain syllable is favored as prominent or stressed as has been claimed in terms of syllable weight and position.

With respect to production, vowel durations, syllable durations, and fundamental frequency patterns (F0) of Standard Korean are analyzed. Results show that vowel durations are acoustically influenced by syllable position as well as syllable weight. In addition, we find that heavy medial syllables are significantly longer than other syllables. The F0 patterns show a significant difference on initial and medial syllables.

With respect to perception, we examine how word prominence in Korean is perceived by native speakers of English, Japanese, and Korean. English listeners seem to use both durational differences and pitch movement as cues for word prominence while Japanese and Korean listeners seem to more sensitive to a relative pitch movement between syllables.

Based on these findings, we argue two competing prominence effects: 1) an edge effect realized as a boundary lengthening, and 2) a head effect preferring a certain syllable position within a word.