• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.6
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• pp.1139-1161
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• 2009

This paper deals with the reduction of unstressed prevocalic /u/ and the appearance of /w/ which are observed in such words as ambiguity [ˌæm bǝ ˈgju: ǝ ti] - ambiguous [æm ˈbɪ gjǝ wǝs]. This phenomenon is recorded in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, and the draft revisions of Oxford English Dictionary Online. Since this phenomenon has not been studied in detail up to now, this paper aims 1) to collect the data related to the reduction of unstressed prevocalic /u/, 2) to classify them systematically, and 3) to explain the phenomenon in terms of Optimality Theory. In the course of analysis, Prevocalic Lengthening, which is crucial to the preservation of unstressed prevocalic /u/, is reinterpreted as one of the ways to prevent hiatus (annual /æ nju: ǝl/). /w/-insertion is another way to prevent hiatus (annual /æ njǝ wǝl/). In addition it is argued that prevocalic /u/ behaves differently from prevocalic /i/ due to the difference in the articulators involved.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.1-7
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• 2021

This study aims to enhance English pronunciation education for Korean students by examining the impact of standard Korean and Gyeongsang regional dialect on the articulation of English vowels. Data were obtained through the Korean-Spoken English Corpus (K-SEC). Seven Korean words and ten English mono-syllabic words were uttered by adult, male speakers of standard Korean and Gyeongsang regional dialect, in particular, speakers with little to no experience living abroad were selected. Formant frequencies of the recorded corpus data were measured using spectrograms, provided by the speech analysis program, Praat. The recorded data were analyzed using the articulatory graph for formants. The results show that in comparison with speakers using standard Korean, those using the Gyeongsang regional dialect articulated both Korean and English vowels in the back. Moreover, the contrast between standard Korean and Gyeongsang regional dialect in the pronunciation of Korean vowels (/으/, /어/) affected how the corresponding English vowels (/ə/, /ʊ/) were articulated. Regardless of the use of regional dialect, a general feature of vowel pronunciation among Korean people is that they show more narrow articulatory movements, compared with that of native English speakers. Korean people generally experience difficulties with discriminating tense and lax vowels, whereas native English speakers have clear distinctions in vowel articulation.

• MALSORI
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• no.39
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• pp.43-51
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• 2000

The aim of this paper is to present a phonetically oriented keyboard array for the International Korean Phonetic Alphabet (IKPA). IKPA is a phonetic alphabet devised on the basis of Hangout (Korean alphabet) (Lee, 1999). Every computer has a keyboard as its input device and the English keyboard array is hewn as 'QWERTY' system, which represents the first six letters of the second line of the keyboard. This array is a traditional one devised to protect the congestion of the keys of the mechanical typewriter. To improve the anay of the keyboard, another system named 'Dvorak' has been devised. Likewise, a serious attempt has been made by the authors to work out an efficient keyboard for IKPA representing the manner of vowel and consonant classification. In the phonetic keyboard, the consonant symbols are arranged in the left hand side according to the Place and mauler of the articulation and the vowel symbols in the right hand side according to the vowel quadrilateral.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.85-95
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• 2000

In this paper, the H1*-H2* measure is introduced and exact procedures for obtaining the H1*-H2* value are fully specified, The H1*-H2* measure (a corrected difference in dB between the first and second harmonics) has been devised to provide an acoustic correlate of the phonation mode of a vowel following a consonant. With this measure, we can investigate the phonation mode of a vowel that is free from the F1 amplitude perturbation effect caused by the preceding consonant, which is especially salient at the voicing onset position of the vowel. For identical research purposes, on the other hand, the H1-H2 measure (the observed difference in dB between the first and second harmonic) has been employed in many previous studies. This paper compares these two measures by illustrating experimental results of exploring post-release phonation modes of vowels following the different manner classes of stop consonants in Korean $\square$i.e., the tense, lenis, and aspirated stops.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.65-74
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• 2005

The aim of this paper is to suggest an index of coarticulation, proportional undershoot values, given the observation that absolute undershoot within a language tends to be proportional to target-locus difference. The target-locus proportionality predicts that a large difference between the consonant locus and the vowel target will result in a large amount of vowel undershoot, while a small difference a small amount of vowel undershoot. It turns out that the proportional undershoot is a potentially more appropriate way of comparing degree of undershoot across languages. However, even though the proportional undershoot measurement may provide a useful index comparing the overall coarticulation degree in a CV token for cross-linguistic data, it is concluded that it may potentially wrongly predict the cases of transfer or error as a progress in learning.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.45-52
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• 2012

The purpose of this paper is to measure the first two vowel formants of the ten young female speakers from the Buckeye Corpus of Conversational Speech [1] automatically and then to analyze various potential factors that may affect the formant distribution of the eight peripheral vowels of English. The factors that were analyzed included the place of articulation, the content versus function word information, the syllabic stress information, the location in a word, the location in an utterance, the speech rate of the three consecutive words, and the word frequency in the corpus. The results indicate that the overall formant patterns of the female speakers were similar to those of earlier works. The effects of the factors on the realization of the two formants were also similar to those from the male speakers with minor differences.

• Proceedings of the Acoustical Society of Korea Conference
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• 1998.08a
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• pp.188-191
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• 1998

호주 영어의 단어 중 한국인과 일본인이 구별하기 어려운 'work', 'walk', 'wok' 세 단어에 대해 다룬다. 우선 한국인과 일본인이 이들 세 단어를 어떻게 조음할 것인가를 예측하고, 실제로 한국인과 일본인 화자들이 조음한 자료를 가지고 모듬의 음질과 길이 두가지 측면으로 나누어 예측한 사항과 비교하고 또 이들 단어를 조음할 때 한국인과 일본인 사이에 어떤 음성 음운적 특징이 나타나는지도 비교 분석한다. 결과는 모국어의 음성, 음운적 영향이 목표어의 음소를 습득하고 발음하는데에 영향을 미친다는 사실을 보여주고 있다. 하지만 wok/wo k/의 예는 언어 보편적인 요소가 L2의 음소를 습득하는데 있어 또 하나의 요소로 작용하고 있음도 알려주고 있다.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2000.07a
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• pp.211-219
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• 2000

In this paper, we examine fO peak lagging phenomenon in English. FO peak lagging refers to the fact that fO peak corresponding to an accent is realized beyond the domain of the host syllable. We present experimental data of fO peak lagging, which shows that fO peak is heavily delayed when the duration of the accented syllable is relatively short. In addition, we show that fO peak is also heavily delayed and realized in the following syllable in a focused word, even where the target vowel is not intrinsically short.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2006.11a
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• pp.139-141
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• 2006

Korean college students' experience in studying English overseas playes the significant role to their perception, not production. Korean Group which experiences foreign-stay for almost 1 year shows the similar pattern with its counterpart, Korean Non- Experiencing Group, in producing the signal of pre-vowel. On the contrary, Korean Experiencing Group shows the similar perceptual pattern with Native Speakers in word-final non-release stops.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.21-29
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• 2013

The mismatch negativity (MMN) is known to be a fronto-centrally negative component of the auditory event-related potentials (ERP). $N\ddot{a}\ddot{a}t\ddot{a}nen$ et al. (1997) and Winkler et al. (1999) discuss that MMN acts as a cue to a phoneme perception in the ERP paradigm. In this study a perception experiment based on an ERP paradigm to check how Korean and American English speakers perceive the American English high front vowels was conducted. The study found that the MMN obtained from both Korean and American English speakers was shown around the same time after they heard F1s of English high front vowels. However, when the same groups heard English words containing them, the American English listeners' MMN was shown to be a little faster than the Korean listeners' MMN. These findings suggest that non-speech sounds, such as F1s of vowels, may be processed similarly across speakers of different languages; however, phonemes are processed differently; a native language phoneme is processed faster than a non-native language phoneme.