Literature Review Researchers have examined the apparent relationship between a prosodic phrasing and the post obstruents

tensification(hereafter POT), where a phonetic reduction triggers the phenomena(Jun 1993; Sohn 1999; Shin and Cha 2003; Kang 2003). Empirical studies supports this claim(Jun 1993, 1998; Shin 1999). Jun(1993) proposed the four factors that affect prosodic structure which is not isomorphic to syntactic structure, including the speech rate, phonological weight, focus, and semantic weight. In Jun(1993)s idea, tensification necessarily occurs to the post obstruent when the factors cause the phonological deletion of AP boundary. Shin(1999) found that what makes distinction the AP boundaries is not VOT but the aspirated noises in the post obstruents because the identical VOTs show different productions in part, while the greater part agreed with VOT. In the research, the aspirated noises were unanimously observed in the post obstruent that did not exhibit the tensification. A number of scholars, on the other hand, paid attention to the articulation of POT by itself. POT can be supported by the articulatory evidences that the glottal closure from the preobstruent produces the air pressure to contribute to the tensification(Kim-Renault 1974:130; Sohn 1987:242), or the narrowness of the glottis from the pre-obstruent is assimilated to the post-obstruent(Oh 1990:129; Kim et al 2005:14), or the tensed vocal fold from the preobstruent does to the post-obstruent(Ahn 1999:150; Yang 2001:91; Cho 2006:178). Those studies based on prosodic and articulatory approaches treated the post -l tensification(hereafter PLT) in relative construction as either an identical event with POT(Shin 1999:43) or with no attention. POT is not alike to PLT phonetically. The Korean lateral -l is not involved into the tenseness of the vocal fold and/or the closeness of the glottis, whereas the articulation of -l cannot stop the air in the oral but releases it through

tongues lateral. The Korean nasal -n, the corresponding relativizer, also causes the air to release through the pharynx to nasal cavity. In this case, the relativizer -n does not entail the post-obstruents tensification of the head noun. Choi(1981) provided the semantic-cognitive perspective on this arguments. A diachronic perspective on the PLT can provide in which