• 음성과학
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• 제13권4호
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• pp.69-87
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• 2006

This study aims to describe the vowel system of present-day American English and to discuss some of its phonetic variations due to regional differences. Fifteen speakers of American English from various regions of the United States produced the monophthongs of English. The vowel duration and the frequencies of the first and the second formant were measured. The results indicate that the distinction between the vowels [c] and [a] has been merged in most parts of the U.S. except in some speakers from eastern and southeastern parts of the U.S., resulting in the general loss of phonemic distinction between the vowels. The phonemic merger of the two vowels can be interpreted as the result of the relatively small functional load of the [c]-[a] contrast, and the smaller back vowel space in comparison to the front vowel space. The study also shows that the F2 frequencies of the high back vowel [u] were extremely high in most of the speakers from the eastern region of the U.S., resulting in the overall reduction of their acoustic space for high vowels. From the viewpoint of the Adaptive Dispersion Theory proposed by Liljencrants & Lindblom (1972) and Lindblom (1986), the high back vowel [u] appeared to have been fronted in order to satisfy the economy of articulatory gesture to some extent without blurring any contrast between [i] and [u] in the high vowel region.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제14권2호
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• pp.11-17
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• 2022

English vowels play an important role in verbal communication. However, Korean students tend to experience difficulty pronouncing a certain set of vowels despite extensive education in English. The aim of this study is to apply speech recognition software to evaluate Korean students' pronunciation of English vowels in minimal pair words and then to examine acoustic characteristics of the pairs in order to check their pronunciation problems. Thirty female Korean college students participated in the recording. Speech recognition rates were obtained to examine which English vowels were correctly pronounced. To compare and verify the recognition results, such acoustic analyses as the first and second formant trajectories and durations were also collected using Praat. The results showed an overall recognition rate of 54.7%. Some students incorrectly switched the tense and lax counterparts and produced the same vowel sounds for qualitatively different English vowels. From the acoustic analyses of the vowel formant trajectories, some of these vowel pairs were almost overlapped or exhibited slight acoustic differences at the majority of the measurement points. On the other hand, statistical analyses on the first formant trajectories of the three vowel pairs revealed significant differences throughout the measurement points, a finding that requires further investigation. Durational comparisons revealed a consistent pattern among the vowel pairs. The author concludes that speech recognition and analysis software can be useful to diagnose pronunciation problems of English-language learners.

• 음성과학
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• 제15권1호
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• pp.37-51
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• 2008

The main goal of this study is to examine if there is a difference in the utilization of a vowel length cue between Korean and Japanese L2 learners of English in their perception and production of postvocalic coda contrast in English. Given that Japanese subjects' performances on the identification and production tasks were much better than Korean subjects' performance, we may support the prediction based on the Feature Hypothesis which maintains that L1 phonological features can facilitate the perception of L2 acoustic cue. Since vowel length contrast is a phonological feature in Japanese but not in Korean, the tasks, which assess L2 leaners' ability to discriminate vowel length contrast in English, are much easier for the Japanese group than for the Korean group. Although the Japanese subjects demonstrated a better performance than the Korean subjects, the performance of the Japanese group was worse than that of the English control group. This finding implies that L2 learners, even Japanese learners, should be taught that the durational difference of the preceding vowels is the most important cue to differentiate postvocalic contrastive codas in English.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제6권1호
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• pp.39-45
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• 2014

This study investigates twenty four Korean females' production of English front vowels focusing on the distinction in /i/ vs /ɪ/ and /ɛ/ vs /${\ae}$/ and formant values of stressed and unstressed vowels compared with those of native English speakers. The Korean learners were asked to read a textbook passage which includes ten sentences including target vowels. The major results indicate that: (1) Korean learners have trouble producing a distinct version (tense and lax) of front vowels in the paragraph reading; (2) The vowel space of the stressed vowels in a paragraph is smaller than that of embedded sentences; and (3) The vowel quality of the unstressed vowels produced by the Korean learners is similar to that of the native English speakers. The findings from this study can be applied to the pronunciation teaching for the Korean learners of English vowels and realization of English stress.

• 대한음성학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한음성학회 2007년도 한국음성과학회 공동학술대회 발표논문집
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• pp.183-186
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• 2007

This study analyzes Korean high school students' pronunciation errors in word-initial onglides in English. For this study, 24 Korean high school students read 34 English words including glide-vowel sequences in word-initial positions and vowel-initial words in a frame sentence. The results showed 2 different error types: glide deletion and vowel distortion. After the analysis of the first recording, the subjects were taught how to pronounce glide-vowel sequences properly in a 60-minute class. Comparison of the analyses of the first and second recordings showed that the subjects improved on the pronunciation of glide-vowel sequences. After the training, the pronunciation errors of diphthongs unique to English, [$j_I$], decreased substantially. However, most subjects still had difficulties in pronouncing [$w{\mho}$], [wu], and [wo]. There was no significant correlation between English course grade and error reduction.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제6권4호
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• pp.17-26
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• 2014

The present study examined epenthetic vowels produced by Korean learners of English in read sentences, in terms of acoustic measures and extra-phonological factors. The results demonstrated three main findings. First, epenthetic vowels had relatively high F1 values and a wide range of F2 values. Most of the epenthetic vowels were inserted near Korean high central vowels, but some vowels were inserted near front vowels due to co-articulation with surrounding vowels. Second, vowel epenthesis was affected by the context. The results showed that the epenthesis was frequently seen with word junctions between obstruents (e.g., stops-fricatives). Third, Korean learners were not affected by English background and were very weakly affected by orthography. English experience, which is one of the extra-phonological factors, was not related to epenthesis production. However, orthography, the other extra-phonological factor, very weakly affected the amount of epenthesis production. Nine percent of all epenthesis production was affected by the English past-tense suffix '-ed'; approximately 70% of the participants were affected by this suffix. The findings of the present study contributed to understanding vowel epenthesis. First, the study revealed that the epenthetic vowels produced by Korean learners of English were close to the high central vowel, supporting previous studies that the epenthetic vowel is quite close to the shortest vowel. Second, the study examined the various phonetic environments of epenthetic vowels, revealing that vowel epenthesis occurred more frequently in a certain phonetic circumstance.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제15권3호
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• pp.9-16
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• 2023

The current study investigated the influence of age of L2 acquisition (AOA) and length of residence (LOR) in the L2 setting country on the production of voicing-conditioned vowel duration and spectral qualities in English by Korean learners. The primary aim was to explore the ways in which the language-specific phonetic features are acquired by the age of onset and L2 experience. Analyses of the archived corpus data produced by 45 native speakers of Korean showed that, regardless of AOA or LOR, absolute vowel duration was used as a salient correlate of voicing contrast in English for Korean learners. The accuracy of relative vowel duration was influenced more by onset age than by L2 experience, suggesting that being exposed to English at an early age may benefit the acquisition of temporal dimension. On the other hand, the spectral characteristics of English vowels were more consistently influenced by L2 experience, indicating that immersive experience in the L2 speaking environment are likely to improve the accurate production of vowel quality. The distinct influence of the onset age and L2 experience on the specific phonetic cues in L2 vowel production provides insight into the intricate relationship between the two factors on the manifestation of L2 phonological knowledge.

• 음성과학
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• 제8권3호
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• pp.7-14
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• 2001

This study was done to find out the difference in vowel length between the English language produced by American soldiers and KATUSA soldiers. Though English pronunciation by Koreans shows different features in many ways, I focused on English vowel length of KATUSA soldiers. I wanted to know if KATUSA soldiers, when compared with American soldiers, showed a foreign accent when they produced English diphthongs. The reason I wanted to deal with English diphthongs is that most Koreans have difficulty in pronouncing them since they do not understand the concept of diphthongs. Therefore I selected five English diphthongs, /aI/, cI/, /au/, /eI/, /ou,/as/ the experimental object, and I tried to find out the foreign accent of them. In this study I also tried to find out the vowel lengths in relation to their utterance positions. I investigated the difference of the English diphthong length between American and KATUSA soldiers using information gathered from experimental results.

• 대한음성언어의학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한음성언어의학회 2003년도 제19회 학술대회
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• pp.170-173
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• 2003

There are more than five systems for transcribing English vowels. Because of this diversity, teachers of English and students are confronted with not a little problems with the English vowel symbols used in the English-Korean dictionaries, English text books, books for Phonetics and Phonology. This study was designed to suggest criterions for the phonemic transcription of English vowels on the basis of phonetic properties of the vowels and a system of English vowel transcription based on the criterions in order to minimize the problems with inter-system differences. A speaker (phonetician) of RP English uttered a series of isolated minimal pairs containing the vowels in question. The suggested vowel symbols are as follows: 1) Simple vowels : /i:/ in beat, /I/ bit, /$\varepsilon$/ bet,/${\ae}$/ bat, /a:/ father, /Dlla/ bod, /$\jmath$:/ bawd, /u/ put, /u:/ boot /$\Lambda$/ but, and /$\partial$/ about /$\Im$:ll$\Im$:r/ bird. 2) Diphthongs : /aI/ in bite, /au/ bout, /$\jmath$I/ boy, /$\Im$ullou/ boat, /er/ bait, /e$\partial$lle$\partial$r/ air, /u$\partial$llu$\partial$r/ poor, /i$\partial$lli$\partial$r/ beer. Where two symbols are shown corresponding to the vowel in a single word, the first is appropriate for most speakers of British English and the second for most speakers of American English.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제3권3호
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• pp.77-88
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• 2011

Foreign accent in second language production depends heavily on the transfer of features from the first language. This study examines acoustic variations in segments and suprasegments by native and nonnative speakers of English, searching for patterns of the transfer and plausible indexes of foreign accent in English. The acoustic variations are analyzed with recorded read speech by 20 native English speakers and 50 Korean learners of English, in terms of vowel formants, vowel duration, and syllabic variation induced by stress. The results show that the acoustic measurements of vowel formants and vowel and syllable durations display difference between native speakers and nonnative speakers. The difference is robust in the production of lax vowels, diphthongs, and stressed syllables, namely the English-specific features. L1 transfer on L2 specification is found both at the segmental levels and at the suprasegmental levels. The transfer levels measured as groups and individuals further show a continuum of divergence from the native-like target. Overall, the eldest group, students who are in the graduate schools, shows more native-like patterns, suggesting weaker foreign accent in English, whereas the high school students tend to involve larger deviation from the native speakers' patterns. Individual results show interdependence between segmental transfer and prosodic transfer, and correlation with self-reported proficiency levels. Additionally, experience factors in English such as length of English study and length of residence in English speaking countries are further discussed as factors to explain the acoustic variation.