• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.59-69
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• 2013

The purpose of this study is to examine the variation of pitch contour observed in the reading of Korean sentences produced by Chinese Korean-learners. In the reading context, Korean sentence intonation can be described by considering accentual phrases' pitch pattern and intonational phrases' boundary tone. But when APs and IPs connect to each other to form sentences, another aspect of speech production must be considered, that is declination of pitch contour. So, in order to examine how Chinese speakers produce Korean sentence intonation, we have analysed the sentences' pitch contours produced by fourteen Chinese speakers differing in proficiency, and compared them to pitch contours produced by six Korean native speakers. The results show that Chinese speakers tend to decline the pitch contour in shorter sentences, but for longer sentences, the declination was not observed. Moreover, even though Chinese speakers produced sentences with declination, internal tonal modulation differs from native speakers.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.61-68
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• 2017

The aim of this study is to investigate the prosodic aspects of ambiguous sentences in Korean produced by Chinese Korean Learners (L1: Chinese, L2: Korean). In Korean, sentence ambiguity can be caused by homonym or syntactically ambiguous structure. In spoken language however all ambiguity can be resolved by different prosodic features according to the meaning that they transmit. In this study we examined whether Chinese Korean Leaners also distinguish, in production, ambiguous sentences on the basis of prosodic characteristics. For this study 4 Korean natives speakers and 10 advanced Chinese Korean learners participated in the production test. The material analysed constituted 10 Korean sentences in which 6 sentences are lexically ambiguous and 4 sentences contain structural ambiguity. The results show that Korean native speakers produced ambiguous sentences by different prosodic structure depending on their semantic and syntactic structure. Chinese speakers also show distinct prosodic structure for different ambiguous sentences in most cases. But in the phonetic realization, the internal pitch range was greater for Korean native speakers than Chinese learners.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.59-73
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• 2012

This study attempts to investigate the contribution of prosody to the foreign accent in Chinese speakers' English production by examining the synthesized speech of crossing native and non-native talkers' prosody and segments. For the stimuli of the foreign accent ratings, we transplanted gender-matched native speakers' prosody onto non-native talkers' segments and vice versa, utilizing the TD-PSOLA algorithm. Eight English native listeners participated in judging foreign accent and comprehensibility of the transplanted stimuli. Results showed that the synthesized stimuli were perceived as stronger foreign accent regardless of speakers' proficiency when English speakers' prosody was crossed with Chinese speakers' segments. This suggests that segments contribute more than prosody to native listeners' evaluation of foreign accent. When transplanted with English speakers' segments, Chinese speakers' prosody showed a difference in duration rather than pitch between high and low proficiency such that stronger foreign accent was detected when low proficient Chinese speakers' duration was crossed with English speakers' segments. This indicated that prosody, more specifically duration, plays a role though the prosodic role is not overall as significant as segments. According to the post acoustic analysis, the temporal features contributing to making the duration parameter prominent as opposed to pitch were found out to be speaking rate, pause duration and pause frequency. Finally, foreign accent and comprehensibility showed no significant correlation such that native listeners had no difficulty listening to highly foreign accented speech.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.51-59
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to examine the pitch pattern of Korean accentual phrases produced by Chinese Korean-learners in the reading of a Korean text. Korean accentual phrase is determined by a specific F0 contour. And the pitch contour of APs differ depending on their length and the nature of initial segment. In order to examine if Chinese speakers are also aware such a phonetic properties, we have examined the AP pitch contours produced by 15 Chinese speakers differing in proficiency, and compared them to pitch contours produced by six Korean native speakers. The results show that Chinese speakers' pitch errors were observed in initial segment-tone interaction and in type of pitch patterns. However, even though Chines speakers produced the same type of pitch patterns, internal tonal modulation differs from native speakers. Finally, on the basis of theses results, we proposed a teaching method that visualizes the F0 contour.

• MALSORI
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• no.40
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• pp.65-78
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• 2000

Korean learners of Chinese have diniculties in pronouncing Chinese tones which distinguish the meaning of words, because there are not such tones in Korean language. It makes Koreans hard to acquire Chinese. In this paper, I present the followings: First, I examine the characteristics of the tones pronounced by Korean speakers, exploiting the method of modern experimental phonetics. Second, I present the pedagogy of Chinese tones, considering the typical errors shown by the experiments on Korean speakers. The Pedagogy Presented in this Paper, which is based on the results of experiments, is not perfect. However, I expect this paper to serve as instrumental tools to help Korean speakers to improve their command of Chinese.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.111-117
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• 2015

The purpose of this study is to investigate how Chinese learners of Korean produce Korean plain plosives differently in a reading passage and isolated sentences. There are several studies on Korean plosives produced by Chinese speakers, but the study comparing the production of reading passage and isolated sentences are rare. For these purposes, ten Chinese speakers' VOT values of Korean plain plosives were measured using Speech Analyzer. The results show that there is no significant difference between the plain plosive production of a reading passage and that of isolated sentences. In the further studies, the measurement of pitch with VOT is needed.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.29-41
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• 2008

The purpose of this paper is to examine how Chinese speakers realize Korean prosodic phrases in the reading of Korean texts. Prosodic phrase, in this study, is defined as basic unit of spoken language which can be perceived as purely separate phonetic unit by both hearer and speaker, and is realized with a coherent intonational configuration. Prosodic phrase plays an important role in both speech production and perception. In the second language acquisition, prosody influences the accuracy and fluency of spoken language. The main purpose of this study is to describe the aspect of syntagmatic operation of prosody that produces prosodic phrases. We have specifically examined the relations between the prosodic phrase's boundary and its syntactic status. Furthermore, we examined internal syntactic structure of each prosodic phrase. And the results of each analysis were compared to the aspects of prosodic phrases' formation produced by native Korean speakers. The results show that Chinese speakers tend to coincide the prosodic phrases with syntactic structure more than native Korean speakers.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.39-49
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• 2010

The purpose of this paper is to examine how Chinese speakers realize Korean intonation phrase (IP) boundary tones in the reading of a Korean text. Korean IP boundary tones play various roles in speech communication. They indicate prosodic constituents' boundaries while simultaneously performing pragmatic and grammatical functions. In order to express and understand Korean utterances correctly, it is necessary to understand the Korean IP boundary tone system. To investigate the IP boundary tone produced by Chinese speakers, we have specifically examined the type of boundary tones, the degree of internal pitch modulation of boundary tones, and the pitch difference between penultimate syllables and boundary tones. The results of each analysis were compared to the IP boundary tones produced by Korean native speakers. The results show that IP boundary tones were realized higher than penultimate syllables.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.37-45
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• 2014

Korean wh-questions and yes-no questions have morphologically the same structure. In speech, however, two types of questions are distinguished by prosodic difference. In this study, we examined if Korean native speakers can distinguish wh-question and yes-no questions produced by Chinese Korean leaners based on the prosodic information contained in the sentences. For this purpose, we performed perception analysis, and 15 Korean native speakers participated in the perception test. The results show that two types of interrogative sentences produced by Chinese Korean leaners were not distinguished by constant pitch contours. These results reveal that Chinese Korean leaners cannot match prosodic meaning and prosodic form. The most saliant prosodic feature used perceptually by native speakers to discriminate two types of interrogative sentences is pitch difference between the F0 pick of wh-word and boundary tone.

• MALSORI
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• no.38
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• pp.113-124
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• 1999

It is well known that Japanese prosodic structure assumes mora below the syllable tier. Syllables with V or CV structure are counted as having one morn whereas those with coda consonants /-pp, -tt, -kk, -ss, -N/ or long vowels are counted as having two morns in Japanese. This study measured the acoustic duration of these special moras ('tokusyuhaku') produced by Tokyo dialect speakers to see if they are isochronic with V or CV. It also examined the production of Korean(Seoul/Kyungsang dialect) and Chinese native speakers loaming Japanese as a second language to examine how the learners' first language influence their second language. Finally, it examined how speakers of the Akita dialect, which is blown as a syllabeme dialect in Japanese, produced them. The results showed that intra-speaker variation as well as inter-speaker variation was observed in the production by Akita dialect speakers. Production of native speakers of Chinese and Kyungsang dialect of Korean -- which have vowel length contrast in their phonological systems -- showed a similar result to Tokyo dialect speakers, which implies the influence of the learners' first language on the acquisition of the second language.