Generating Interlanguage Syllabification in Optimality Theory" 
Hyouk-Keun Kim 
Department of Linguistics 
Georgetown University 
37 th & O St. NW, Washington, DC 20057, USA 
kimhk@epsilon3.georgetown.edu 
Abstract 
This paper proposes an Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky, 1993) \[OT\]-based generator of the 
Interlanguage \[IL\] I syllabification of Korean speakers of English. Basically, I accept the ideas of 'cyclic 
CON-EVAL loop' and 'locally encoded finite candidate set' proposed by Hammond (1995, 1997b). 
However, in order to treat some features of Korean accented English such as vowel epenthesis, 
segment modification (stop voicing, devoicing, nasalization, etc.), and ambisyllabicity, I suppose that 
the input string of phonemes be linked to two templates of candidate grid sets; one for syllable 
position, and the other for (finite) possible output segments for each input segment. I will also use the 
ALIGN family of constraints to treat the Korean coda neutralization phenomena effectively. 
1. Introduction 
In a second language acquisition, one of the most 
important factors in learner errors is first language 
transfer (Kenworthy, 1987; Major, 1994). Many 
Korean speakers, for example, mispronounce 'pick 
me up' as \[phi!lmi^p\] (stop nasalization) and 'stop 
it' as \[swtha_bit\] (vowel epenthesis and voiceless 
stop voicing), since they tend to transfer Korean 
phonology to their English IL. 
Ellison (1994), Tesar (1995), Eisner (1997), 
Hammond (1995, 1997b), etc. propose how to 
implement OT. However, their implementation is 
usually based on basic syllable structure 
constraints such as *PEAK/C, *MARGIN/V, 
PARSE, FILL, ONSET, NoCoda, *COMPLEX, etc. 
Accordingly, it is hard for such implementation 
to cover the syllabification of real language data 
properly, since most languages including IL of 
Korean learners of English are not simple enough 
to be governed by only such constraints. 
In the next section, I will present the salient 
features of Korean phonology and IL phonology 
of Korean speakers of English \[IL-K-E\] in terms 
of OT. In Section 3, I will propose how to 
implement an OT-based generator of IL-K-E. In 
Sections 4, I will mention contribution and future 
work of this project. Section 5 is the conclusion. 
* The generator in this paper is a subsystem of my Korean Accented English Pronunciation Simulator 
\[KAEPS\] system, which is part of the Ph.D. dissertation I am writing. The KAEPS system is implemented in PERL 
and deals with pronunciation not only of word-level but also of phrase-level English orthographic representations. 
The output of the KAEPS is three types of English pronunciations: 1) a phoneme-based English pronunciation, 2) a 
desirable allophone-based English pronunciation, and 3) one or some possible Korean accented English 
pronunciation(s). It is run on the Web and its URL is http://epsilon3.georgetown.edu/~kimhk/cgi-bin/kaepsL I am 
grateful to Lisa Zsiga and an anonymous reader for their comments on an earlier version of this paper, and to Cathy 
Ball and Donna Lardiere for their help and encouragement which aided me in accomplishing this project, and also 
to Michael Hammond for allowing me to try to revise his parser (1995) in order to make it compatible with my 
KAEPS system. Of course, all errors or mistakes in this paper are mine, 
\] Selinker (1969, 1972) proposed and elaborated the term "interlanguage" to explain the unique utterance of 
L2 learners. It is regarded as a separate linguistic system which results from a learner's attempts to produce a target 
language norm. 
1 
2. IL Phonology of Korean Speakers of 
English \[IL-K-E\] 
Korean has three distinctive types of voiceless 
stops as phonemes: aspirated/ph, t h, kn/, fortis/p*, 
t*, k*/, and lenis /p, t, k/. Voiced stops do not 
exist as phonemes but exist as allophones, 
because lenis stops become voiced between two 
(voiced) sonorant sounds. Thus, unlike English, 
aspiration is a phonemic feature and voicing in 
stops is an allophonic one in Korean. Many 
Koreans tend to accept English voiceless stops as 
Korean aspirated stops, so they pronounce school 
as \[stukhul\]. In this project, the input of an English 
voiceless stop is regarded as an aspirated stop. 
There are three salient features of Korean 
syllable structure. First, consonant clusters are not 
allowed. When speaking an English word with 
consonant clusters, many Koreans tend to insert a 
vowel as shown below: 
(1) a. school \[sw.khul\] 
b. mint \[rain.thin\] 
In English, *COM should be lower-ranked than 
MAX or DEP. 
In IL-K-E, vowel epenthesis occurs not only 
in consonant clusters but also in syllable-final 
fricatives or affricates or even stops preceded by 
a diphthong (Ahn, 1991; H-B Park, 1992; 
Broselow & H-B Park, 1995; Tak, 1996) as 
shown below: 
(6) a. kiss \[kais_m_\] 
b. push \[p~uJ'_i\] 
c. tight \[thaithw\]. 
This is related to the second feature of Korean 
syllable structure that only seven consonants \[p, t, 
k, m, n, q, 11 can occur in the coda position in 
Korean. Labial and velar stops are neutralized as 
a homorganic lenis stop (/ph, p., p/ ~ \[p\]; /k h, 
k*, k/ ~ \[k\]), and all coronal obstruents as \[t\] 
(It h, t*, t, t~ h, ~*, t~, s, s*/~ \[t\]). To deal with this 
coda neutralization phenomenon, I propose the 
following Feature Alignment Constraints, 
revising Hong (1997): 2 
Let us see how such IL pronunciation is obtained 
in terms of OT. First of all, the following OT 
constraints are to be considered: 
(2) *.'_COMPLEX \[*COMI (P&S) 
No more than one C or V may associate 
to any syllable position node. 
(3) MAX (McCarthy, 1995a) 
Every element of S 1 has a correspondent 
in $2. (no deletion of a segment) 
(7) a. Align-Left (\[stiff vocal folds\], or) 
~\[A-L(svf, or)\] 
b. Align-Left (\[+continuant\], ~) 
\[A-L(cont, cr)\] 
These constraints force a segment with the 
corresponding feature in the syllable-initial 
position. Like Hong, I also adopt IDENT-IO IF\] 
constraints, which also belong to the 
Correspondence Theory family. 
(4) DEP (McCarthy, 1995a) 
Every element of $2 has a correspondent 
in S 1. (no insertion of a segment) 
The constraint ranking seems to be {*COM, 
MAX} >> DEP as depicted in (5): 
(5) mint 
/mintn/ 
min 
mint h 
min.thtu 
*COM MAX DEP 
*! 
*! 
2 Adopting McCarthy & Prince's (1993) General 
Alignment and It6 & Mester's (1994) concept of 
CodaCond, Hong (1997) proposes the following: 
Align-Left (\[larygeal\], G) . 
This is based on Lombardi's (1995a,b) proposal of 
laryngeal neutralization. That is, laryngeal features 
such as aspiration or voicing appears only in the 
syllable-initial position. However, the scope of Korean 
coda neutralization is not limited only to laryngeal 
neutralization, since alveolar fricatives and alveo- 
palatal affricates are also neutralized as a plain lenis 
alveolar stop It/ as described above. Furthermore, a 
voiced stop can occur in an ambisyllabic coda position 
by means of Lenis Stop Voicing as shown in (19) later. 
2 
(8) !DENT-IO \[F\] (McCarthy, 1995a) 
Correspondent elements in S 1 and $2 
have identical values for feature \[F\]. 
(no phonological affiliation) 
(9) IDENT-IO constraints 
a. IDENT-IO \[stiff vocal folds\] ID\[svf\] 
b. IDENT-IO \[continuant\] 
c. IDENT-IO \[voiced\] 
d. IDENT-IO \[sonorant\] 
e. IDENT-IO \[lateral\] 
f. IDENT-IO \[place\] 
ID\[cont\] 
ID\[vd\] 
ID\[son\] 
ID\[lat\] 
ID\[place\] 
In Korean, the constraints of (7) outrank those of 
(9) as depicted below: 
(10) os 'clothes' in Korean 
/os/ 
~e ot 
os *! 
OSU.J *! 
A-L(cont, o) DEP ID\[cont\] 
Since \[os\] and lost.u\] violate higher-ranked A-L 
(cont, o) and DEP, respectively, lot\] is judged 
optimal even if it violates ID\[cont\]. However, as 
shown in (6), English kiss is not pronounced as 
\[kit\] but \[kistu\], which means ID\[cont\] should 
outrank DEP in IL-K-E. On the other hand, top is 
usually pronounced as \[thap\] not as \[#aphtu\], 
which means DEP outranks ID\[svf\] as shown in 
(11). That is, the modification of \[continuant\] 
feature is severer than that of \[svf\] feature. 
(11) kiss and top in IL-K-E 
/k"is/ 
A-L ! A-L ~ ID DEP ID 
(cont,o):: (svf) i\[cont\] \[svf\] 
knit *! 
khis *! 
k~istu 
/thap~/ 
thap 
tnap h : *t : 
thaphtu : : , ! 
The third feature of Korean syllable 
structure is that increasing sonority across the 
syllable boundaries is disfavored. An obstruent 
before a nasal, for example, cannot be preserved 
due to the increasing sonority, but changes into a 
homorganic nasal with the same sonority as 
shown below: 
(12) Obstruent nasalization 
a) os.man los.man/~ on.man \[on.man\] 
'clothes only' 
b) aph.ni /apn.ni/ ~ am.ni \[am.nil 
'front tooth' 
To deal with this, the following Syllable Contact 
Constraint is proposed: 
(13) Syllable Contact Constraint \[SCC\] 3 
Avoid rising sonority across the 
syllable boundaries. 
The selection of the output form in (12-a) can be 
depicted as follows: 
(14) os.man 'clothes only' in Korean 
los.man/ 
a) os.man 
b) ot.man 
c) on.man 
d) ol.man 
e) om.man 
Candidates (a, b) 
S A-L 
C (cont, 
ID iID ! IDi ID i ID 
\[cont\]i\[pl\] i\[lat\] i\[son\]i\[vd\] 
* *! 
* *\] 
, ; , 
C o) 
*!i * 
*!i 
are eliminated due to the 
violation of higher-ranked SCC. Candidates (c, d, 
e) satisfy both SCC and A-L(cont, o), and violate 
ID\[cont\], ID\[son\] and ID\[vd\]. However, 
candidates (d, e) violate ID\[lat\] and ID\[place\] 
respectively, which candidate (c) does not 
violate. So candidate (c) is selected. 
When Koreans transfer this obstruent 
nasalization phenomenon to English, pick me up 
is pronounced as \[phiq.mi.^p\] and big mouse as 
\[piq.ma.u.stu\]. Resyllabification is also related to 
3 This corresponds to Murray & Vennemann 
(1983) and Vennemann's (1988) Syllable Contact 
Law, which was based on Hooper (1976). Davis & 
Shin (1997) propose such a constraint and Hong 
(1997) adopts it. 
3 
SCC. 4 If a nominal particle, '-i', is attached to os 
(10), the neutralization does not occur, since Is/is 
resyllabified as the onset of the following syllable 
as in os-i \[o.si\]. s 
(15) os-i 'clothes-NOM' in Korean 
/os/ SCC A-L (cont, o) ID\[cont\] 
a) os.i 
b) ot.i 
*! * 
~c) o.si 
d) o.ti *! 
To satisfy a higher-ranked constraint SCC, the C 
in VCV sequences in a prosodic word must be 
syllabified as an onset of the second vowel as in 
(c) and (d). Between the two candidates, (c) is 
judged optimal since it satisfies the ID\[cont\] 
constraint, too, while (d) violates it. 
However, a compound word wus.os /us.os/ 
'upper garment' is not pronounced as \[u.sot\] but as 
\[udot\]. This indicates that the coda/s/belonging 
to the first word wus is neutralized as/t/and this 
lenis stop becomes voiced between two vowels. 
To avoid misjudging \[u.sot\] as optimal, Align- 
Left (7) is clarified as (16) and another Align 
constraint such as (17) is proposed, following 
Hong (1997). 
(16) a. Crisp-Align-Left (\[stiff vocal folds\], o) 
CA-L(svf, a) 
b. Crisp-Align-Left(\[+continuant\], o) 
CA-L(cont, o) 
(17) Non-Crisp-Align-Right (Rooto m~, PrWd) 
• --~ NCA-R(Rt, PW) 
Crisp Alignment does not allow ambisyllabicity, 
while Non-Crisp Alignment allows it (It6 & 
4 There are other phonological phenomena related 
to the SCC such as lateralization, delateralization,/n/- 
insertion, Ill-insertion, etc. However, I will not deal 
with them in this paper. 
s In fact, Is/ becomes palatalized before a high 
front vocoid. But I skip this phenomenon in this paper. 
The other issue is that ONSET can also play a role for 
triggering resyllabification. However, SCC covers the 
role of ONSET, i.e., ONSET can be regarded as a 
subset of SCC. 
Mester,1994). Accordingly, (16) does not allow 
aspirated stops, fortis stops, fricatives, or 
affricates to occur in the coda position whether 
they are ambisyllabic or not. On the other hand, 
(17) allows the last element of the root word to 
become ambisyllabic, but does not allow it to be 
disconnected from the original word. 
Proposing a Voice constraint (18) to deal 
with Korean Lenis Stop Voicing phenomenon, let 
us consider how to syllabify wus.os. 
(18) VOICE \[VCE1 
Stops with a \[-stiff vocal folds\] (i.e., non- 
aspirated or non-fortis) feature are realized as 
voiced between two sonorant sounds within 
an accentual phrase, and as voiceless 
elsewhere. 
(19) wus.os 'upper garment' in Korean , ! 
S NCA-Ri CA-Li V ID ID 
/us+os/ C (Rt, PW~(cont,iC \[cont\] \[vd\] 
~r 
u d:+ot 
u t÷ot 
60 63 
us+ot 
CO 63 
O :a lax 
U s~ot 
e) u. d o.._! 
If) ud. ot 
g) us. ot 
C 
*! 
*vl 
o) i E 
:*I 
*! 
*! 
Candidate (a) is judged optimal since it violates 
only the lower-ranked ID\[cont\] and ID\[vd\], which 
are compelled to satisfy a higher-ranked CA-L 
(cont, a) constraint. Candidate (b) is eliminated 
due to the violation of a higher-ranked VCE. 
Candidate (c) violates CA-L(cont, a) since Is/ 
4 
should not be a coda anyway, and is eliminated. 
Candidates (d, e) are eliminated due to the 
violation of higher-ranked NCA-R(Rt, PW). The 
word wus is a root and also a prosodic word by 
itself, so its final element Is/ should not belong to 
another word. Candidates (f, g) are eliminated, 
since they violate another highly-ranked SCC. 
The transfer of the coda neutralization and 
lenis stop voicing phenomena to English may 
result in the pronunciation of stop it as \[smthabit\]. 
The following tableau shows how it works (Note: 
ambisyllabic C is represented as "'C'"): 
(20) pick up in IL-K-E 
~ * iS !NC~ CAiV 
c -R i -LiC 
c~ 0 ::C i(Rt, ! (svf~ E 
M i PW)i o) s t" ap_h + i t___.h 
sthaon.it h ,! • i ** a. 
:,!i • 
: ,vi • 
! .1: 
b. sm.thaph.it 
c. sm.thap.it 
d. sm.thab.it 
e. sm.tha.pNj 
f. stu.tha.p it 
g. sm.tha.b it 
h.sta.tha.ph.it 
i. stu.tha'p'it 
j. sm.t"a'b'it 
• *! 
• ' ,! 
• i *! 
: .! 
ID I D ID 
\[vd\] E \[svq 
P 
*! * 
* i ** 
: * * ** 
i 
:* ! * ** 
Candidate (a) is eliminated due to the violation of 
a higher-ranked *COM. All other candidates 
violate a lower-ranked DEP to satisfy *COM. 
Candidates (b, c, d) and (e, f, g) are cast out due to 
the violation of higher-ranked SCC and NCA- 
R(Rt, PW), respectively. Candidates (h, i) are 
eliminated due to the violation of CA-L(svf, a) 
and VCE, respectively. Candidate (j) is selected 
even if it violates ID\[vd\], DEP and ID\[svf\], which 
are lower-ranked. The reason why ID\[vd\] is 
considered to outrank DEP is due to the 
observation that Koreans tend to insert a vowel 
after a voiced stop even preceded by a lax vowel. 
That is, sad may be pronounced as \[sedm\] rather 
than as \[set\], where the former violates DEP but 
the latter violates ID\[vd\]. 6 
6 However, some words like good usually do not 
To sum up, the constraint ranking in IL-K-E 
considered up to now is as follows: 
(21) Constraint Ranking in IL-K-E 
{ *COM (2), MAX (3), SCC (13), 
CA-L(svf/cont, o) (16), 
NCA-R(Rt, PW) (17) } 
>> ID\[cont, vd, son, lat, place\] (9b,c,d,e,f) 
>> DEP (4) 
>> ID\[svf\] (9a) 
3. Syllable Generation of Korean Accented 
English in OT 
3.1 Problems 
According to Hammond (1997b), the greatest 
problem in OT-based implementation is the 
possibility of the infinite candidate set when 
epenthesis (violation of DEP) or deletion 
(violation of MAX) are allowed, since Gen can 
produce infinitely any candidates. Even if there is 
no epenthesis or deletion, assuming that any 
segment can be syllabified as an onset, peak, 
coda or unparsed element, a word with n 
elements may have 4" possible syllabifications, 
which is an exponential problem. In addition, 
each candidate has to be tested by each 
constraint. That is, the combination of the 
number of candidates times the number of 
constraints must be considered, which is an 
arithmetic but still nontrivial problem. 
To solve these problems, he proposes: I) 
implementation of syllabification is made by a 
form of a parser, which does not need to consider 
epenthesis nor deletion; 2) syllabification is 
encoded locally; and 3) a cyclic CON-EVAL loop 
is applied constraint by constraint. 
The problems of implementation of IL-K-E 
in OT are more complicated than those raised by 
Hammond, since ambisyllabicity, epenthesis, and 
segment modification should be considered. The 
allow epenthesis, even if the final segment is a voiced 
stop. More experimental research is required on this 
issue, and I will skip this in this paper. 
system dealing with such syllabification cannot be 
a parser but a generator. 7 
3.2 Korean accented English Generator 
I assume that the initial candidate set produced by 
Gen can be predictable and finite, following the 
previous researches (Ellison, 1994; Tesar, 1995; 
Eisner, 1997; Hammond, 1995, 1997b). I adopt 
the concept of local encoding (Hammond, 1995, 
1997b) developed from the concept of finite state 
automata (Ellison, 1994) and that of dynamic 
programming (Tesar, 1995). Unlike Hammond, 
however, since the role of this generator is not 
only syllabifying the input segments but also 
modifying them into suitable output segments, I 
suppose there are two templates of candidate 
grids: one representing syllable positions, and the 
other representing potential segment output 
forms. 
Supposing the input is a phrase like stop it, 
whose string of phonemes is/s t h a ph # i th/, the 
grids look like below: 
(22) Grid A (for syllable position) 
s t h a ph # i t h 
O O O O O O O 
n n n n n n n 
nn nn an nn nn nn nn 
C C C C C C C 
CO CO CO CO CO CO CO 
on on on on on on on 
U U U U U U U 
(23) Grid B (for output segments 8) 
7 Hammond differentiates, "The generator would 
start with an input form, generate candidate 
syllabifications, and apply constraints to produce a 
syllabified output. A parser would start with an 
unsyllabified output, generate candidates, and produce 
a syllabified output" (p.6). 
s In producing candidates for segments, only 
those which may become optimal forms in some 
situations are considered. The number of candidates for 
S t h a ph # i t h 
S t h .a ph # i t" 
t p ~ t 
d b d 
n m n 
s w t n w ph w t h w 
As shown in (22), each segment can be an onset, 
a nucleus, two nuclei, 9 a coda, an ambisyllabic 
coda-onset, an onset + a nucleus (due to 
epenthesis), or an unparsed segment. Deletion is 
not considered in the current project. Constraints 
(cyclic CON-EVAL) prune away disfavored 
candidates cyclically. If there is only one member 
left in the candidate set, it should not be pruned 
away by any constraint. Grid A (22) is treated 
first, and then Grid B (23) is treated. 
There are constraints such as NUC 
requiring a nucleus in a syllable, and 
*MARGIN/V saying a vowel cannot be an onset 
or a coda, and *PEAK/C saying a consonant 
cannot be a nucleus. So, if a segment is a vowel, 
all candidates but 'nn' (for a diphthong) or 'n' (for 
another vowel) are removed, and if a consonant, 
'n' and 'nn' is removed as shown in (24) (the 
removable candidate is italicized and 
underlined): 
(24) NUC, *MARGIN/V, *PEAK/C 
s t" a p" # i t" 
o o _o o o p_ o 
n_ _n n n_ n n _n 
n n n_.n_ nn nn nn nn nn 
c c _c c c g c 
co co c._.Q, co co c._..Q co 
on on o_v_ on on o__v_ on 
u u _u u u _u I u 
segments depends on the types of segments. For 
example, a voiceless stop has five candidates: 
aspirated one, unaspirated one, voiced one, nasal one, 
and epenthesized one, while a nasal has only one 
candidate, itself. 
9 Many Koreans tend to regard an English 
6dipthong like/arJ as two distinctive vowels like/a i/. 
I adopt Hammond's idea of housekeeping, 
too, and propose the following cases: 
(25) Housekeeping 
a. word-initial coda and coda-onset 
b. word-final onset 
c. phrase-final coda-onset 
d. word-final coda before another word 
starting with a vowel 
e. no parsing of word boundary 
A word cannot start with 'c' or 'co' (a), and cannot 
end with 'o' (b). 'co' can occur in the word final 
position, but not in the phrase final position (c). A 
'c' in a word-final position is deleted if it follows 
by '#' and 'n' (due to the SCC(13)) (d). A word 
boundary '#' has only 'u' (e). 
(26) Housekeeping 
s t h a ph # i t n 
0 0 _0 b 0 e .0. b 
n t! e n 
C a C _C a C e C 
C._O a CO CO ¢_.O e C_.O c 
on t on on Oi._.! e on I 
u lu u u u 
Every segment is considered to be parsed, 
i.e., no deletion is considered in the current 
system, So 'u' is deleted in each set. 
(28) ONSET 
s t h 
O O 
ph # i \[ t h 
n 
£ 
EP_ co 
on on on on 
U 
It is better to delete the portion of the word 
boundary symbol, before *COM starts to work. 
*COM does not allow a sequence of 'o + o', or 'c 
+ c'. So delete 'o' or 'co' preceded by 'o', and 'c' or 
'co' followed by 'c'. I° 
(29) *COM 
s t h 
o o 
ph i t h 
n n 
CO 
on on on 
Since a vowel is usually epenthesized after 
a fricative or an affricate in the coda position, 'c' 
or 'co' under such a segment should be deleted by 
means of CA-L(cont, o). For the current 
example, however, this application is vacuous. 
(27) PARSE 
s t h 
0 O 
a ph # i t h 
n n 
c 
co co 
on on on on 
i 
A consonant immediately before a vowel 
should be an onset, and has only 'o'. 
(30) CA-L (cont, o) 
the same as (29) 
Now, DEP plays a role of pruning 'o n' 
candidate in a set containing more than one 
element. 
10 Not only is an English diphthong regarded as 
two vowels (cf. footnote 9), but also an obstruent 
followed by it tends to be epenthesized (cf. 6-c), so 
that 'c' and 'co' in this position may be deleted. I think 
this phenomenon is also related to *COM. For the 
current example, however, this is not applicable. 
(31) DEP 
S t h a ph i t h 
0 
n 
co 
l on o___~ on, 
be checked. The voiceness of each segment 
checked by using feature geometry. 
(34) VOICE 
s t h a ph i t h 
o n o n co n c 
t h a i 
t /2 t 
d b _d 
n m n 
is 
At last, the optimal set of Grid A candidates 
is determined, which is dispatched to Grid B (23). 
Before applying constraints, one-to-one matching 
occurs. That is, if the syllable position needs two 
segments, i.e., if it is 'o n', candidates such as 't h 
m' with epenthesized vowel will be selected; if it 
is not 'o n', candidates such as 't h m' will be 
removed. 
(32) One-to-one matching 
S t h a ph i t h 
o n o n co n c 
s t h a ph i t h 
t p t 
d b d 
SILl 
IDENT\[F\] constraints remove candidates 
which has a different \[F\] feature from that of 
input as shown in (33) and (34): 
(35) IDENT\[nas\] 
s t h a ph i t h 
o n o n co n c 
t h a i 
t 
d b 
sw 
!.! 
SI.U 
n m n 
thtu ~ t~w 
SCC checks the sequence of 'c' and 'o', and 
compare the sonority degree of the segments, 
usually for nasalization. Here, it is not applicable. 
CA-L(svf, o) deletes an aspirated stop under 'c' or 
'co' as shown below: 
(36) IDENT\[vd\] 
S t h a ph i t h 
on o n co n c 
t h a i 
t 
_d b 
(33) SCC: vacuous, CA-L(svf, or) 
s t h a ph i t h 
o n o n co n c 
t h a p_h i t..n 
t p t 
d b d 
n m n 
SILl 
The conditions of voicing or devoicing will 
(37) 
SLI.I 
Finally, the generation is done as follows: 
(~ a (7 
A A',,A sm tha bit \[sm.tha.b.it\]. 
Let us examine another example big mouse 
which is related to obstruent nasalization. I'll skip 
8 
the syllabification of the syllable position grid. 
(38) One-to-one matching 
b 
o 
b 
k 
m 
b.__w 
i g 
n c 
i g 
k 
q 
m ou s 
o nn o n 
m ou s 
SUJ 
(39) SCC 
b i g m ou s 
o n c o an o n 
b i g m ou 
k _k 
m q 
SU.I 
(40) VOICE 
b 
o 
_b 
P 
m 
i m ou s 
n o nn o n 
i m ou 
SW 
(41) .... IDENT\[nas\]/\[vd\]/\[svf\] 
b \] i g m ou s 
o i n c o an o n 
i m ou 
P 
Sill 
The result is as follow: 
(42) a t2 a t2 
/T",, A I /1 
p i q ma u sw \[piq.ma.u.sw\] 
3.4 Contribution and Future Work 
The current work is significantin that it analyzes 
and implements the generation of the 
syllabification of an IL, IL°K-E, in OT. It tries to 
generate not only syllable positions but also 
modified output segments. 
There are some Korean phonological 
phenomena, which are not considered at the 
current system. They are palatalization, Ill-/r/ 
alternation, etc. Next step is dealing with these 
phenomena. 
IL among L2 learners must be different 
according to the learners, and it is not always the 
same even in the same person. The current 
system produces only one type of output based on 
the transfer of some Korean phonology. Further 
efforts will be made to generate several possible 
IL pronunciations according to the different 
levels of proficiency. 
4. Conclusion 
This paper deals with an OT-based generator for 
Interlanguage phonology of Korean speakers of 
English. Hammond (1997b) insists that OT-based 
syllabification be made as a parser which does 
not need to consider epenthesis or deletion. 
However, in order to syllabify Korean accented 
English, not only epenthesis but also segment 
modification such as stop voicing/devoicing or 
stop nasalization should be considered. 
I adopted the basic ideas proposed by 
Hammond and others: finite candidate set, cyclic 
CON-EVAL and local encoding. I proposed two 
templates of candidate sets: one representing 
syllable positions (onset, nucleus, two nuclei, 
coda, ambisyllabic coda-onset, onset + 
epenthesized vowel, and unparsed position), the 
other representing potential output forms for each 
segment. Under the basic syllable constraints, the 
optimal candidates in the syllable position grid 
are selected. The result is used to generate the 
potential output segments which can be revised 
from the original input segments under the 
constraints basically applicable to Korean 
phonology. 
9 

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