• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.15-23
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• 2020

This study examines the duration of Korean lax and tense stops in the prosodic word-medial position, their interactions with nearby segments, and the phonological implications of these interactions. It first examines the lengthening of consonants at the function of the short lax stop. Experiment 1 shows that the sonorant C1 is significantly longer before a short lax stop C2 than before a long tense stop. Experiment 2 shows that the short lax stop C1 cancels the contrast between the lax and tense obstruent at C2, making them appear as long tense obstruents (Post-Stop Tensing Rule). We suggest that such lengthening phenomena occur in Korean to robustly preserve the contrastive length difference between C and CC. Second, this study examines the vowel shortening, known as Closed-Syllable Vowel Shortening, before a long tense stop or before the consonant sequence. Experiment 3 suggests that it be interpreted as temporal adjustment to make the interval from the onset of a vowel to the onset of the following vowel of near-equal length. Conclusively, we suggest that Korean speech be planned and controlled with two specific intervals. One is the duration of contrastive consonant intervals between vowels, and the other is the duration from the onset of a vowel to the onset of the following vowel.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.1-23
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• 2007

The purpose of this research is to explore the effects of systematic teaching English pronunciation and listening in English. Focusing on phonemes and words in pairs and sentences, the sound systems of the English and Korean languages are dealt with in conjunction with the test data. This paper first discusses the systemic, or primary interference and the habitual, or secondary interference that hinder comprehension of certain English sounds. Second, the analysis of input and output test data on the contrasting vowels and consonants shows statistic significance in terms of the probability (p value) of t-test. Third, the comparative data by means of percentile of right answers on contrasting vowel and consonant sounds expound the different sound systems of the English and Korean languages. With this data, problems in pronunciation of and listening to English, and the factors that may cause these problems are analyzed so that they can be used as a guideline for a systematic approach in teaching English learners, thus leading to more satisfactory performance.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.19-24
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• 2022

This study examined which acoustic cue(s) that Korean learners of English give weight to in perceiving English lexical stress. We manipulated segmental and suprasegmental cues in 5 steps in the first and second syllables of an English stress minimal pair "object". A total of 27 subjects (14 native speakers of English and 13 Korean L2 learners) participated in the English stress judgment task. The results revealed that native Korean listeners used the F0 and intensity cues in identifying English stress and weighted vowel quality most strongly, as native English listeners did. These results indicate that Korean learners' experience with these cues in L1 prosody can help them attend to these cues in their L2 perception. However, L2 learners' perceptual attention is not entirely predicted by their linguistic experience with specific acoustic cues in their native language.

• 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.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.31-38
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• 2008

The aim of this study was to find how English vowels affect the pronunciation of English sibilants /$d_3,\;{_3}$, z/ by Korean learners of English. Fifteen nonsense syllables composed by five vowels /a, e, i, o, u/ were pronounced six times by twelve Korean learners of English. Test scores were measured from the scoreboard made by a speech training software program, which was designed for English pronunciation practice and improvement. Results show that 1) the subjects had the lowest scores in /a_a/ position, and 2) subjects had lower scores in the /i_i/ position than in /e_e/, /o_o/ and /u_u/ positions when they pronounced $/d_3/,\;/{_3}/$, and /z/ in their respective inter-vocalic position. This study found that for the group studied Korean learners of English have more difficulty in pronouncing sibilants in /a_a/ and /i_i/ positions than in the other positions.

• MALSORI
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• no.62
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• pp.1-17
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• 2007

The purpose of this study was to investigate and quantitatively describe the acoustic characteristics of current Korean monophthongs. Recordings were made of 33 men and 27 women producing the vowels /i, e, ${\epsilon}$, a, ${\partial}$, o, u, i/ in a carrier phrase "This character is ___." A listening test was conducted in which 19 participants judged each vowel. F1, F2, and F3 were measured from the vowels judged as intended vowels by more than 17 people from the listening test. Analysis of formant data shows some interesting results including the undeniable confirmation of the 7-vowel system in modern Korean. It turns out that quite different sounding Korean vowels and English vowels happen to have very similar formant measurements. Also the difference between "citation-form reading" vs. "natural utterance reading" is discussed.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.173-184
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• 2002

The question of Korean rhythmic type is still a controversial issue (syllable-timed; stress-timed; word-timed). As a step toward solving the question, an experiment was carried out to examine compression effects in Korean. There has been a general belief that the increase of the number of following or preceding syllables causes compression of a vowel (or syllable) in many languages, and a marked anticipatory compression effect can be especially indicative of stress timing. The purpose of this research, therefore, was to obtain some evidence to determine whether or not Korean is stress-timed. The durations of the target vowel/a/ of the monosyllabic word /pap/ were measured at both word and sentence level. In general, marked anticipatory and backward compression effects on the target vowel were observed across one-, two- and three-syllable words in citation form, whereas the effects were neither marked nor consistent at sentence level. These results led us to claim that Korean is not stress-timed.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.101-108
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• 2014

This study investigates the relation among pitch range differences, speech rate and realization of stress. To identify the realization of the stress, vowel formants and durational differences of stressed and unstressed vowels are measured. The Korean learners were asked to read a textbook passage which includes nine sentences. The major results indicate that: (1) Korean speakers' pitch range is less than 50% of the native speakers; (2) There is a significantly negative relation between high-low pitch range and speech rate; (3) The vowel qualities and durations of the stressed and unstressed vowels are related to the speech rate. But these are not related to the high-low pitch range.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.9-18
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• 2018

This paper presents an acoustic and phonological study of the alveolar flaps in American English. Based on the Buckeye Corpus, the flapping tokens produced by twenty men are analyzed at both lexical and post-lexical levels. The data, analyzed with Pratt speech analysis, include duration, F2 and F3 in voicing during the flap, as well as duration, F1, F2, F3, and f0 in the adjacent vowels. The results provide evidence on two issues: (1) The different ways in which voiced and voiceless alveolar stops give rise to neutralized flapping stops by following lexical and post-lexical levels, (2) The extent to which the vowel features (height, frontness, and tenseness) affect flapping sounds. The results show that flaps are affected by pre-consonantal vowel features at the lexical as well as post-lexical levels. Unlike previous studies, this study uses the Praat method to distinguish flapped from unflapped tokens in the Buckeye Corpus and examines connections between the lexical and post-lexical levels.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.47-58
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• 2014

The purpose of this paper is to find out how Korean speakers' speech production in English word boundaries differs from English speakers' and to account for what bring about such differences. Seeing two consecutive words as one single cluster, the English speakers generally pronounce them naturally by linking a word-final consonant of the first word with a word-initial vowel of the second word, while this is not the case with most of the Korean speakers; they read the two consecutive words individually. In consequence, phonological processes such as resyllabification and aspiration can be found in the English speakers' word-boundary production, while glottalization, and unreleased stops are rather common phonological process seen in the Korean speakers' word-boundary production. This may be accounted for by Korean speakers' L1 interference, depending on English proficiency.