• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.326-336
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• 2022

This study aims to examine Korean learners' production of American English vowel focused on feature analysis. Specifically, the present study adopts feature analysis so that vowel production is analyzed in terms of vowel features as well as overall segmental accuracy. To this end, 22 Korean college students participated in a production test which contained 11 English vowels /i, ɪ, eɪ, ɛ, æ, ɑ, oʊ, ɔ, ʊ, u, ʌ/. The results revealed that the degree of difficulty varied depending on features; the Korean participants showed higher accuracy for front/back features than for tongue height features and tense/lax features. In particular, the participants had more difficulty producing back vowels and non-high vowels than front vowels and high vowels with respect to tongue height features and lip rounding features. Among the individual vowels, /eɪ/ showed the highest accuracy in feature analysis. On the other hand, /ɑ, ɔ, ʌ/ showed low accuracy with respect to height features and lip rounding features, and high vowels /i, ʊ, u/ showed low accuracy with respect to tense/lax features. As for the correlation between the vowel features, tongue height features and lip rounding features are significantly correlated. Also, tongue height features and tense/lax features showed a strong correlation. Finally, pedagogical implications for teaching English vowels were further discussed based on the findings of the current study.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.1-11
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• 2004

The aim of this study is to reveal the order and the age of mastery of phonemic contrast in vowel sounds of Korean. For this purpose, we made an observation of the correspondences between the sounds produced by children of 12-35 months and the target sounds produced by adults. The provisional order and the age of contrast acquisition shown from the results of this study are as follows. First, the differential production of vowels by the feature relating to the body of the tongue precedes the differential production of vowels by the feature relating to the lip rounding. Second, as for the differential production of vowels by the feature relating to the body of the tongue, the contrast between the low vowels and the others is accomplished first, and the contrast between the high and low vowels and the contrast between the front and the back vowels are established around the age of 24 months. Third, as for the differential production of vowels by the feature relating to the lip rounding, the contrast between the rounded and the unrounded vowel is not accomplished until 36 months. Finally, we observed, prior to the completion of the differential production of phonemes, children use a specific phoneme excessively. This passing phrase could be interpreted as a result of over-application of a distinctive feature in the course of acquisition of it.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.33-42
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• 2020

This study identified the substitution of /u/ for /o/ (e.g., pyəllo [pyəllu]) in Korean based on the speech corpus as a function of grammar items. Korean /o/ and /u/ share the vowel feature [+rounded], but are distinguished in terms of tongue height. However, researchers have reported that the merger of Korean /o/ and /u/ is in progress, making them indistinguishable. Thus, in this study, the frequency of the phonetic manifestation /u/ of the underlying form of /o/ for each grammar item was calculated in The Korean Corpus of Spontaneous Speech (Seoul Corpus 2015) which is a large corpus from a total of 40 speakers from Seoul or Gyeonggi-do. It was then confirmed that linking endings, particles, and adverbs ending with /o/ in the word-final position were substituted for /u/ approximately 50% of the stimuli, whereas, in nominal items, they were replaced at a frequency of less than 5%. The high rates of substitution were the special particle "-do[du]" (59.6%) and the linking ending "-go[gu]" (43.5%) among high-frequency items. Observing Korean pronunciation in real life provides deep insight into its theoretical implications in terms of speech recognition.