• Title/Summary/Keyword: English Vowels

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Perception of Korean Vowels by English and Mandarin Learners of Korean: Effects of Acoustic Similarity Between L1 and L2 Sounds and L2 Experience (영어권, 중국어권 학습자의 한국어 모음 지각 -모국어와 목표 언어 간의 음향 자질의 유사성과 한국어 경험의 효과 중심으로-)

  • Ryu, Na-Young
    • Journal of Korean language education
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    • v.29 no.1
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    • pp.1-23
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    • 2018
  • This paper investigates how adult Mandarin- and English- speaking learners of Korean perceive Korean vowels, with focus on the effect of the first language (L1) and the second language (L2) acoustic relationship, as well as the influence of Korean language experience. For this study, native Mandarin and Canadian English speakers who have learned Korean as a foreign language, as well as a control group of native Korean speakers, participated in two experiments. Experiment 1 was designed to examine acoustic similarities between Korean and English vowels, as well as Korean and Mandarin vowels to predict which Korean vowels are relatively easy, or difficult for L2 learners to perceive. The linear discriminant analysis (Klecka, 1980) based on their L1-L2 acoustic similarity predicted that L2 Mandarin learners would have perceptual difficulty rankings for Korean vowels as follows: (the easiest) /i, a, e/ >> /ɨ, ʌ, o, u/ (most difficult), whereas L2 English learners would have perceptual difficulty rankings for Korean vowels as follows: (the easiest) /i, a, e, ɨ, ʌ/ >> /o, u/ (most difficult). The goal of Experiment 2 was to test how accurately L2 Mandarin and English learners perceive Korean vowels /ɨ, ʌ, o, u/ which are considered to be difficult for L2 learners. The results of a mixed-effects logistic model revealed that English listeners showed higher identification accuracy for Korean vowels than Mandarin listeners, indicating that having a larger L1 vowel inventory than the L2 facilitates L2 vowel perception. However, both groups have the same ranking of Korean vowel perceptual difficulty: ɨ > ʌ > u > o. This finding indicates that adult learners of Korean can perceive the new vowel /ɨ/, which does not exist in their L1, more accurately than the vowel /o/, which is acoustically similar to vowels in their L1, suggesting that L2 learners are more likely to establish additional phonetic categories for new vowels. In terms of the influence of experience with L2, it was found that identification accuracy increases as Korean language experience rises. In other words, the more experienced English and Mandarin learners of Korean are, the more likely they are to have better identification accuracy in Korean vowels than less experienced learners of Korean. Moreover, there is no interaction between L1 background and L2 experience, showing that identification accuracy of Korean vowels is higher as Korean language experience increases regardless of their L1 background. Overall, these findings of the two experiments demonstrated that acoustic similarity between L1 and L2 sounds using the LDA model can partially predict perceptual difficulty in L2 acquisition, indicating that other factors such as perceptual similarity between L1 and L2, the merge of Korean /o/ and /u/ may also influence their Korean vowel perception.

An Acoustic Study of English Non-Phoneme Schwa and the Korean Full Vowel /e/

  • Ahn, Soo-Woong
    • Speech Sciences
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    • v.7 no.4
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    • pp.93-105
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    • 2000
  • The English schwa sound has special characteristics which are distinct from other vowels. It is non-phonemic and occurs only in an unstressed syllable. Compared with the English schwa, the Korean /e/ is a full vowel which has phonemic contrast. This paper had three aims. One was to see whether there is any relationship between English full vowels and their reduced vowel schwas. Second was to see whether there is any possible target in the English schwa sounds which are derived from different full vowels. The third was to compare the English non-phoneme vowel schwa and the Korean full vowel /e/ in terms of articulatory positions and duration. The study results showed that there is no relationship between each of the full vowels and its schwa. The schwa tended to converge into a possible target which was F1 456 and F2 1560. The Korean vowel /e/ seemed to have its distinct position speaker-individual which is different from the neutral tongue position. The evidence that the Korean /e/ is a back vowel was supported by the Seoul dialect speaker. In duration, the English schwa was much shorter than the full vowels, but there was no significant difference in length between the Korean /e/ and other Korean vowels.

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A System of English Vowel Transcription Based on Acoustic Properties (영어 모음음소의 표기체계에 관한 연구)

  • 김대원
    • Proceedings of the KSLP Conference
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    • 2003.11a
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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.

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Pitch and Formant Trajectories of English Vowels by American Males with Different Speaking Styles (발화방식에 따른 미국인 남성 영어모음의 피치와 포먼트 궤적)

  • Yang, Byung-Gon
    • Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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    • v.4 no.1
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    • pp.21-28
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    • 2012
  • Many previous studies reported acoustic parameters of English vowels produced by a clear speaking style. In everyday usage, we actually produce speech sounds with various speaking styles. Different styles may yield different acoustic measurements. This study attempts to examine pitch and formant trajectories of eleven English vowels produced by nine American males in order to understand acoustic variations depending on clear and conversational speaking styles. The author used Praat to obtain trajectories systematically at seven equidistant time points over the vowel segment while checking measurement validity. Results showed that pitch trajectories indicated distinct patterns depending on four speaking styles. Generally, higher pitch values were observed in the higher vowels and the pitch was higher in the clear speaking styles than that in the conversational styles. The same trend was observed in the three formant trajectories of front vowels and the first formant trajectories of back vowels. The second and third trajectories of back vowels revealed an opposite or inconsistent trend, which might be attributable to the coarticulation of the following consonant or lip rounding gestures. The author made a tentative conclusion that people tend to produce vowels to enhance pitch and formant differences to transmit their information clearly. Further perceptual studies on synthesized vowels with varying pitch and formant values are desirable to address the conclusion.

The Phonetics and Phonology of English Schwa

  • Ahn, Soo-Woong
    • Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
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    • v.1 no.2
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    • pp.311-329
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    • 2001
  • This paper wanted to test the reality of English schwa by phonetic and phonological methods. Phonetically it wanted to see acoustic evidence of the relationship between the full vowels and their reduced vowels in the unstressed positions. Phonologically it wanted to prove how systematic the schwa sound is by the constraint-based grammar. As a result, the schwa phenomenon in English was supported both phonetically and phonologically. In the phonetic analysis no relationship Was found in the distribution of the F1 and F2 of the full vowels and their reduced vowels in the unstressed syllables of the derived words. The reduced vowels tended to converge into a target of F1 516 and F2 1815. The view that the schwa sounds have a target was supported. On the phonological side the constraint-based tableau produced the successful output by using FAITH (V), (equation omitted)V, FAITH V[-BACK+HiC], V[-Low, -TNS]#, REDUCE V[-STR, -TNS] as constraints. No ranking was found. Any violation of the constraints ousted the candidates.

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Acoustic analysis of English lexical stress produced by Korean, Japanese and Taiwanese-Chinese speakers

  • Jung, Ye-Jee;Rhee, Seok-Chae
    • Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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    • v.10 no.1
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    • pp.15-22
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    • 2018
  • Stressed vowels in English are usually produced using longer duration, higher pitch, and greater intensity than unstressed vowels. However, many English as a foreign language (EFL) learners have difficulty producing English lexical stress because their mother tongues do not have such features. In order to investigate if certain non-native English speakers (Korean, Japanese, and Taiwanese-Chinese native speakers) are able to produce English lexical stress in a native-like manner, speech samples were extracted from the L2 learners' corpus known as AESOP (the Asian English Speech cOrpus Project). Sixteen disyllabic words were analyzed in terms of the ratio of duration, pitch, and intensity. The results demonstrate that non-native English speakers are able to produce English stress in a similar way to native English speakers, and all speakers (both native and non-native) show a tendency to use duration as the strongest cue in producing stress. The results also show that the duration ratio of native English speakers was significantly higher than that of non-native speakers, indicating that native speakers produce a bigger difference in duration between stressed and unstressed vowels.

Australian English Sequences of Semivowel /w/+Back Vowel /3:/, c:/ or /a/ Perception by Korean and Japanese Learners of English

  • Park, See-Gyoon
    • Speech Sciences
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    • v.4 no.1
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    • pp.91-112
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    • 1998
  • This paper aimed at examining the influence of L1 (native language) phonology when speakers of L1 perceive L2 (foreign language) sounds. Korean and Japanese learners of English took a perception test of Australian English words 'work', 'walk' and 'wok'. Based on Korean and Japanese phonology, it was predicted that Korean subjects would face more difficulties than Japanese subjects. The results of the experiment substantiated the influence of L1 phonology in L2 learners' L2 sound perception.

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A study on the foreign accent of Koreans

  • Park, Hee-Suk
    • Speech Sciences
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    • v.7 no.1
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    • pp.187-201
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    • 2000
  • This study was done to investigate the English vowels in relation to the foreign accent. In this study, I also tried to find out the foreign accent of the English diphthong /o/ and front low vowel /${\ae}$/ when Koreans speak English. The reason why I chose these vowels is that these vowels, /o/ and /${\ae}$/, are difficult for Koreans to discern and pronounce. Koreans show a foreign accent in their pronunciation. In order to find out the reason for a Korean foreign accent, experiments were carried out with the help of acoustic instruments. According to the results of the experiment, Koreans showed a foreign accent in their English pronunciation of vowels in relation to their utterance positions. Americans showed a final lengthening effect but Koreans showed a final shortening effect. This means that Koreans showed a foreign accent in the final stressed syllable of a sentence. In addition to this, the duration of two English vowels, /o/ and /${\ae}$/, showed considerably different features between Koreans and Americans. In fact, in the pronunciation of the diphthong /o/, the tongue moves from one position to another. The two articulations of a diphthong can be described as the nucleus plus a glide. However, most Koreans have no idea of this phenomenon and pronounce the diphthongs like two separate monophthongs. This causes a great difference in the lengths of English diphthong /o/ between Koreans and Americans.

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Reduction and Frequency Analyses of Vowels and Consonants in the Buckeye Speech Corpus

  • Yang, Byung-Gon
    • Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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    • v.4 no.3
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    • pp.75-83
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    • 2012
  • The aims of this study were three. First, to examine the degree of deviation from dictionary prescribed symbols and actual speech made by American English speakers. Second, to measure the frequency of vowel and consonant production of American English speakers. And third, to investigate gender differences in the segmental sounds in a speech corpus. The Buckeye Speech Corpus was recorded by forty American male and female subjects for one hour per subject. The vowels and consonants in both the phonemic and phonetic transcriptions were extracted from the original files of the corpus and their frequencies were obtained using codes of a free software R. Results were as follows: Firstly, the American English speakers produced a reduced number of vowels and consonants in daily conversation. The reduction rate from the dictionary transcriptions to the actual transcriptions was around 38.2%. Secondly, the American English speakers used more front high and back low vowels while three-fourths of the consonants accounted for stops, fricatives, and nasals. This indicates that the segmental inventory has nonlinear frequency distribution in the speech corpus. Thirdly, the two gender groups produced vowels and consonants similarly even though there were a few noticeable differences in their speech. From these results we propose that English teachers consider pronunciation education reflecting the actual speech sounds and that linguists find a way to establish unmarked segmentals from speech corpora.

Phonetic Vowel Reduction Conditioned by Voicing of Adjacent Stops in English (음성적 모음 축소 현상에 영어 자음의 유무성 환경이 미치는 효과)

  • Oh, Eun-Jin
    • Speech Sciences
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    • v.14 no.4
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    • pp.81-98
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    • 2007
  • This study aims to investigate whether shortened vowel duration conditioned by a following voiceless stop induces phonetic reduction of vowel space in English, and whether the reduction appears more in the height dimension than in the backness dimension (Lindblom, 1963; Flemming, 2005). Fifteen native speakers of American English read minimal pairs containing ten American English vowels in [bVd] and [bVt] syllables in a carrier phrase. All the subjects produced shorter vowels in the voiceless than in the voiced context. However, a reduction in vowel space and a raising of low vowels due to the shortened vowel duration were generally not found. To the contrary, the speakers tended to exhibit even more lowering of low vowels in the voiceless context, and vowel space was more commonly compressed in the backness dimension than in the height dimension. Many speakers, in particular, demonstrated fronting of the high back vowel [u] in the voiceless context. It was interpreted that due to a relatively large number of English vowels in the narrower low vowel space, the raising of low vowels may give rise to confusion in vowel contrasts, and therefore the degree of phonetic vowel reduction is restricted in that region. On the other hand, the high vowel region, being relatively spacious in English, allows a certain degree of phonetic vowel reduction in the F2 dimension. It is possible that heavy requirements for maintaining vowel contrasts may cause speakers to overachieve vowel target values, especially when faced with vowels which are difficult to distinguish due to shortened vowel duration, leading to an over-lowering of the low vowels.

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