A Comparative Study of English Vowel Lengths between Koreans and Americans

한국인과 미국인의 영어 모음길이 비교연구

  • Published : 1997.11.01

Abstract

This thesis describes pronunciation differences of vowel lengths between Koreans and Americans speaking English words and sentences. This study also analizes the reasons for these differences with the help of acoustic instruments. Sixteen sentences and eight words were selected as the experimental material. The informants for this study were 9 males; 3 Americans and 6 Koreans, who were asked to pronounce the test words and sentences five times. In this study, the acoustical analysis to measure duration was done through computer digital techniques. According to the results of the experiment, duration of 8 English vowels pronounced between Koreans and Americans shows very different features. When Koreans pronounce English vowels, the duration of the stressed vowel in the sentence-final position is much shorter than in other positions, such as in the sentence-initial and in word position. On the contrary, when Americans pronounce English vowels, the duration of the stressed vowel in the sentence-final position is much longer than in other positions. If the correlation between length and stress were to be studied in a more detailed manner, it would give fundamental help to the study of relation between stress and length.

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