• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.15-22
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• 2011

The purposes of this study are (1) to investigate the correlation between English word-final stop and the duration of vowels before word-final stop and (2) to suggest a way to detect pronunciation errors and teach the pronunciation of English word-final stops. For these purposes, 18 Korean speakers' production was recorded and analysed using Speech Analyzer and their production was compared with that of native English speakers. In addition, two native English speakers evaluated the subjects' pronunciation. The major findings are the voicing dependent effect of the English vowels produced by native Korean speakers is lower than that of native English speakers; Korean speakers release English word-final stops less than native English speakers; and the pronunciation of English word-final stops and the duration of adjacent vowels are closely related in that the pronunciation score of final stops and the ratio of vowels between the vowels before voiced stops and voiceless stops are correlated. In addition, this study concludes with pedagogical suggestions that may be useful for English pronunciation teaching.

• 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.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.95-102
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• 2015

The purpose of this paper is to extract the vowel formants of the ten adult male speakers in their twenties and thirties from the Korean Corpus of Spontaneous Speech [4], also known as the Seoul corpus, and to analyze them by comparing to earlier works on the Buckeye Corpus of Conversational Speech [1] in terms of the various linguistic factors that are expected to affect the formant distribution. The vowels extracted from the Korean corpus were also compared to those of the read Korean. The results showed that the distribution of the vowel formants from the Korean corpus was very different from that of read Korean speech. The comparison with English corpus and read English speech showed similar patterns. The factors affecting the Korean vowel formants were the interviewer sex, the location of the target vowel or the syllable containing it with respect to the phrasal word or utterance and the speech rate of the surrounding words.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.45-50
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• 2018

The vowel/consonant ratio is a well-known cue for the voicing of postvocalic consonants. This study investigates how this ratio changes as a function of speaking rate. Seven speakers of North American English read sentences containing target monosyllabic words that contrasted in coda voicing at three different speaking rates. Duration measures were taken for the voice onset time (VOT) of the onset consonant, the vowel, and the coda. The results show that the durations of the onset VOT and vowel are longer before voiced codas, and that the durations of all segments increase monotonically as speaking rate decreases. Importantly, the vowel/consonant ratio, a primary acoustic cue for coda voicing, was found to pattern asymmetrically for voiced and voiceless codas; it increases for voiced codas but decreases for voiceless codas with the decrease in speaking rate. This finding suggests that there is no stable ratio in the duration of preconsonantal vowels that is maintained in different speaking styles.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.69-76
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• 2017

The current study investigated whether Korean learners' English-learning environments, especially target English accent (General American English (GAE) vs. Southern British English (SBE)) and English-language experience affected their production of English vowels. Thirty six EFL learners, 27 ESL-US learners, and 33 ESL-UK learners produced 8 English vowels with a bVt frame (beat, bit, bet, bat, bought, bot, boat, boot). The learners' productions were acoustically analyzed in terms of F1 and F2 frequencies. The overall results revealed that the learners' target accent had an effect on their production of some English vowels. The EFL and ESL-US learners' (especially, female learners') production of bought, bot, boat, and boot, which show characteristic differences between the GAE and SBE accents, was closer to that of the native American English (AE) speakers than the native British English (BE) speakers. In contrast, the ESL-UK learners' production of bought and bot demonstrated the opposite pattern. Thus, the impact of target accent was not demonstrated across the board. The effect of the learners' different English-language experience was also rather limited. This was because the EFL learners' production was not much different from the ESL-US learners' production, in spite of the ESL-US learners' residence in the US for more than 9 years. Furthermore, the Korean learners, irrespective of their different English-language experience, tended to produce bit and bat with lower F1 than the native AE and BE speakers, thus resulting in bit and bat to be produced similarly to beat and bet, respectively. This demonstrates the learners' persistent L1 effects on their English vowel production despite the learners' residence in the English speaking countries or their high English proficiency.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.121-135
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• 2007

The purpose of this paper is to examine how Korean speakers realize English stress and rhythm at the sentence level, and investigate what different acoustic characteristics of English sentence stress and rhythm Korean speakers have, compared with those of American English speakers. Stressed words in the sentence were analyzed in terms of duration, fundamental frequency, and intensity of the stressed vowel in the word with neutral stress and with emphatic stress, respectively. According to the results, when the words had emphatic stress, both Koreans' and Americans' F0 and intensity of the stressed vowel were higher than those with neutral stress. Korean speakers of English realized the sentence stress with shorter vowel duration and higher F0 than American English speakers when the words had emphatic stress. The analysis of the timing of the sentence with increased unstressed syllables showed that both Americans and Koreans produced the sentence with longer duration as the number of unstressed syllables increased. However, the duration of unstressed syllables between stressed syllables by Koreans was longer than that by Americans. Americans seemed to produce unstressed syllables between stressed syllables faster than Koreans for regular intervals of stressed syllables. This analysis implies that if there are more unstressed syllables between stressed syllables, Koreans might produce unstressed syllables and the whole sentence with longer duration.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.107-115
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• 2015

In this paper English word-final /s/ and /z/ produced by English and Korean speakers were investigated. The durations and maximum intensities of these fricatives with those of their preceding vowels were compared. In the English speakers' productions, they relied on the ratio of the durations of them as well as the ratio of the maximum intensities of them. In their productions, the /s/ was long in duration and high in maximum intensity and its preceding vowel was short in duration whereas the /z/ was short in duration and low in maximum intensity and its preceding vowel was long in duration. However, the maximum intensities of the preceding vowels were not different in their productions. But in the Korean speakers' productions, they relied on neither the ratio of the durations of them nor the ratio of the maximum intensities of them. In their productions, the /s/ and the /z/ were not different in durations, but the duration of the preceding vowel of the /s/ was shorter than that of /z/, and the maximum intensities of the /s/ and /z/ as well as their preceding vowels were not different. Based on these results we can conclude that in distinguishing /CVs/ and /CVz/ words, English speakers used durations and intensities of the word-final fricatives in addition to durations of the vowels whereas Koreans used only durations of the vowels.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.19-24
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• 2016

The Korean high back vowels /o/ and /u/ have been reported to be in a state of near-merger especially among young female speakers. Along with cross-generational changes, the vowel position within a word has been reported to render different phonetic realization. The current study examines native English speakers' ability to attend to the phonetic cues that distinguish the two merging vowels and the positional effects (word-initial vs. word-final) on the identification accuracy. 28 two-syllable words containing /o/ or /u/ in either initial or final position were produced by native female Korean speakers. The CV part of each target word were excised and presented to six native English speakers. The results showed that although the identification accuracy was the lowest for /o/ in word- final position (41%), it increased up to 80% in word-initial position. The acoustic analyses of the target vowels showed that /o/ and /u/ were differentiated on the height dimension only in word-initial position, suggesting that English speakers may have perceived the distinctive F1 difference retained in the prominent position.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.143-148
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• 2002

This study examined the foreign accent of Korean speakers of English concerning vowel length and utterance position. It then attempts to explain the foreign accent of Koreans when they speak English. The method was to measure the sentence-initial and sentence-final vowels as spoken by Koreans. I chose these two positions, sentence-initial and sentence-final, in order to know if Korean speakers of English, compared with native English speakers, show a difference in sentence stress. I chose English diphthongs, because most Koreans have difficulty pronouncing these sounds. I found that Korean speakers of English as a second language do not know English sentence stress patterns and show a foreign accent, especially when using diphthongs.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.1
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• pp.65-78
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• 2010

The purpose of this paper is to suggest that the International Phonetic Alphabet be included in English curriculum and taught in English classroom. Current English curriculum for elementary and middle school students doesn't specify anything for the education of the IPA. The knowledge of IPA is essential for the students to study by themselves how to pronounce English words. The IPA, however, is either too little or too much to be taught at school. It is too little in that it doesn't tell us anything about allophones, the knowledge of which could enable us to get rid of foreign accents as much as possible. It is too much in that it can represent more than one sounds (e.g., /ɔ/ in American and British English). To overcome these drawbacks, it should be introduced gradually with the allophones in the same environments. The correct vowel sounds should be introduced with the aid of pronunciation dictionary so that the students could get their own vowel quality. Moreover, the IPA symbol should be adopted for the English textbooks.