• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2004.05a
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• pp.143-146
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• 2004

The aim of this paper is to investigate how the stem-final consonant clusters beginning with the liquid /ㄹ/ in Korean are realized in speech. Most scholars claim that the Korean stem-final consonant clusters are simplified and reduced to a stop consonant when pronounced. An attempt is made in this paper to verify the claim by conducting a series of listening tests and an acoustic analysis. The listening tests show that, contrary to the previous claims, some Koreans actually pronounce the stem-final consonant clusters as a whole. The result of the spectrographical study confirms our auditory observation. It has been found that the duration time taken by the stem-final consonant clusters is clearly longer when both consonants are pronounced than when only a liquid is pronounced. Similarly the vowel length of the previous syllable in the former is found to be longer in scale than the latter.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2000.07a
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• pp.75-85
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• 2000

Koreans and English have different phonotactic constraints and phonological rules. It causes Korean learners to have difficulty in pronouncing certain English consonant clusters correctly. This paper aims to discuss what English consonant clusters are difficult for Korean learners to learn and why this difficulty arises by comparing phonotactic constraints and phonological rules of English and Korean.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.6
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• pp.1193-1220
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• 2009

This study examined the impact of sonority profiles, positional differences and L2 proficiency on Korean EFL learners' perception of English biconsonantal clusters, using nonce words. The overall results showed that major predictions of the sonority-based typological markedness on consonant clusters were supported, as obstruent plus sonorant and sonorant plus obstruent sequences were better perceived than obstruent only or sonorant only sequences. Yet, some consonant clusters did not show a preference for sonority profiles. Positional effects were also confirmed, as word-initial biconsonantal clusters were better perceived than wordfinal ones across all the participant groups. Participants' English proficiency turned out to be also important in the perception of consonant clusters, since university students' mean rate of accuracy was highest, followed by that of high school students, which in turn followed by that of middle school students. Further, the effects of other factors like frequency and stimuli on speech perception were also addressed, along with some implications for future research.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.109-113
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• 2007

Second language learners' variable degree of production difficulty according to the cluster type has previously been accounted for in terms of sonority distance between adjacent segments. As an alternative to this previous model, I propose a Phonetically Based Consonant Cluster Acquisition Model (PCCAM) in which consonant cluster markedness is defined based on the articulatory and perceptual factors associated with each consonant sequence. The validity of PCCAM has been tested through Korean speakers' production of English consonant clusters.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.233-247
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• 2004

This study explores sound alternations in a consonant cluster in which at least one consonant is a sonorant (a son/C cluster, hereafter). In this study, I argue that phonological processes affecting son/C clusters result from low perceptual salience rather than from the Syllable Contact Law as discussed in Vennemann (1988), Clements (1990), Rice & Avery (1991), Baertsch & Davis (2000), among others. That is, as a main factor motivating the alternations in the cluster, I consider contrasts of weak perceptibility triggered by phonetic similarity between two members of a cluster (Kawasaki 1982, Ohala 1992, 1993). Based on the findings from a typological survey in 31 different languages, I show that a speech perception-based account makes a correct prediction regarding the patterning of sonorant/sonorant sequences and that of obstruent/sonorant sequences, while the syllable contact account does not.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.80-84
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• 2006

Motivated by the fact that cluster reduction strategies such as inserting a vowel or deleting a consonant in resolving English complex clusters differ depending on studies, this paper investigates the repair strategies employed by Korean EFL students. A total of 60 college students participated in the present study and the participants' production of English voiceless word-initial and word-final clusters was measured using the materials designed for this study. It has been shown that prosodic positions such as onset and coda and the number of cluster sequences influenced cluster reduction strategies. The error rates of both insertion and deletion were noticeably higher in the coda position than in the onset position and both insertion and deletion error rates were higher in triconsonatal cluster than in biconsonantal cluster sequences. Overall, the insertion rate was higher than the deletion rate. However, the deletion rate was significantly higher than the insertion rate in triconsonantal coda cluster sequences. Because of this, the deletion rate was higher than the insertion rate for triconsonantal cluster sequences across onset and coda. Also, the high deletion rate of triconsonantal coda clusters contributed to the high deletion rate for the coda clusters in general.

• MALSORI
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• no.45
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• pp.1-14
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• 2003

This paper criticizes S. Kim (1992), claiming that the perception of place cues in the reduced stop consonant clusters ('reducing' means 'cutting off' the acoustic silence in stop clusters) largely depends on the acoustic characteristics such as formant transition and noise frequency distribution of stop burst, rather than the closure duration time as advocated by S. Kim (1992). The claim is based on the perception test conducted upon 111 stimuli over 10 subjects. The finding is that, when the closure duration is cut off up to the point where only one stop is perceived, place of the second stop, not the first one, in the cluster is in most cases perceived regardless of the places of the first and second stops. It is likely that the place cues of the stop in the prevocalic position mask those in the postvocalic position.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.55-58
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• 2006

The aim of this paper is to investigate the effects of postvocalic consonant cluster (Contrasting nasal-stops consonant with stops) on vowel duration. In particular we focused on the rate of vowel duration in their words. (Experimental I ) and the tendency of unreleased voiceless stops at the end of the words.(Experimental II). The result of experimental I showed that the rate of vowel duration which is preceding single voiceless stops are significantly longer than those preceding nasal-stops counterparts and the percentage of English native speakers was longer than those of Korean leaners of English Experiment II indicated that the tendency of unreleased stop consonants occurred more frequently on single voiceless stops than nasal-stop clusters and Korean learners of English were more frequently produced the unreleased stops than English natives.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.45-53
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• 2015

The current study investigated CVCC syllables in spontaneous American English speech to find out whether such syllables are produced as phonological units with a string of segments, showing a hierarchical structure. Transcribed data from the Buckeye Speech Corpus was used for the analysis in this study. The result of the current study showed that the constituents within a CVCC syllable as a phonological unit may have phonetic variations (namely, the final coda may undergo deletion). First, voiceless alveolar stops were the most frequently deleted when they occurred as the second final coda consonants of a CVCC syllable; this deletion may be an intermediate process on the way from the abstract form CVCC (with the rime VCC) to the actual pronunciation CVC (with the rime VC), a production strategy employed by some individual speakers. Second, in the internal structure of the rime, the proportion of deletion of the final coda consonant depended on the frequency of the word rather than on the position of postvocalic consonants on the sonority hierarchy. Finally, the segment following the consonant cluster proved to have an effect on the reduction of that cluster; more precisely, the following contrast was observed between obstruents and non-obstruents, reflecting the effect of sonority: when the segment following the consonant cluster was an obstruent, the proportion of deletion of the final coda consonant was increased. Among these results, the effect of word frequency played a critical role for promoting the deletion of the second coda consonant for clusters in CVCC syllables in spontaneous speech. The current study implies that the structure of syllables as phonological units can vary depending on individual speakers' lexical representation.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.3-17
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• 2012

This study examines Korean speakers' production of English consonant clusters, focusing on vowel insertion. An acoustic analysis along with a statistical test was carried out to see what factors are involved in this production. The following factors were considered in the present study: phonetic properties, L1 transfer, and cluster types. Specifically, liquid types were considered to see if they cause any difference depending on C+/l/ or C+/r/ clusters in the onset in terms of vowel insertion patterns. That is, it was examined which Korean speakers produce better, C+/l/ or C+/r/ clusters. Interestingly, the result of the present experiment shows that the correct answer percent was higher in the C+/r/ onset clusters than C+/l/ onset clusters unlike Eckman's (1977) Marked Differential Hypothesis. In other words, the occurrence of the vowel insertion in C+/l/ clusters is higher than C+/r/ onset clusters. This may be attributed to L1 transfer. Furthermore, in the present study, three patterns of vowel insertion in the C+/l/ clusters were identified by implementing an acoustic analysis based on vowel duration and formant: a) vowel insertion with gemination, b) phonological epenthesis, and c) phonetic intrusion. However, phonetic intrusion mainly occurred in the C+/r/ clusters. Data were collected from 54 Korean speakers to see what factors are involved in vowel insertion patterns in the production of English consonant clusters. This study provides evidence for L1 transfer, the duration effect of /l/ in a different context, and three kinds of vowel insertion patterns in conjunction with gestural coordination by age groups.