• 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.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2005.04a
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• pp.59-62
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• 2005

One's mother tongue can have an effect on learning a foreign language, especially on pronunciation. Investigating and comparing English vowels /${\varepsilon}$/ and /${\ae}$/, and their- supposedly- corresponding vowels in Korean /에/ and /애/, this study addresses the following questions: Can Koreans distinguish /에/ and /애/? Can they distinguish /${\varepsilon}$/ and /${\ae}$/ in English? And what is the relationship between the Korean vowels and the English vowels? That is, is the conventional correspondence of /에/-/${\varepsilon}$/ and /애/-/${\ae}$/ appropriate? The results showed that most Korean students distinguish neither Korean /에/ and /애/, nor English /${\varepsilon}$/ and /${\ae}$/. While not distinguishable within a language, Korean /에/ and /애/ still form a separate group from English /${\varepsilon}$/ and /${\ae}$/. Therefore the correspondence between /에/-/${\varepsilon}$/ and /애/-/${\ae}$/ is not appropriate. Strategies for teaching English pronunciation should be designed accordingly.

• 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.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.51-58
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• 2010

English vowels play an important role in the daily communication between Korean students and international visitors. However, many Korean students still have difficulty producing them distinctively. Vowels vary according to shapes of oral and pharyngeal cavities, which are mainly determined by the degree of jaw opening and tongue position. Yang (2008a) proposed a simplified chart of English and Korean vowels for an educational purpose. He also suggested to use wooden chopsticks to secure distinguishable jaw openings. The purpose of this study is to tap whether wooden chopsticks can be applicable to a method for correcting English vowel pronunciation. Twelve male and female students participated in the recordings of eight /hVd/ words followed by additional recordings with wooden chopsticks between upper and lower teeth. The first and second formant trajectories of both natural and controlled vowel productions were obtained and compared at six equidistant measurement points using Praat. Results showed that the formant values of natural vowel productions were comparable to those of controlled productions. Vowels with similar formant trajectories of male students were separated with the aid of chopsticks. The width of each chopstick could be controlled similarly in the experiment. The author concludes that wooden chopsticks can be useful to correct vowel pronunciation. Further studies are desirable for native speakers to make perceptual evaluations of controlled vowel productions by nonnative speakers.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.31-38
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• 2013

This study investigated the influence of English vowel pronunciation training to English word-initial stop pronunciation. For that purpose, VOT values of English stops produced by twenty Korean English learners(five Youngnam dialect male speakers, five Youngnam dialect female speakers, five Kangwon dialect male speakers, and five Kangwon dialect female speakers) were measured using the Speech Analyzer and their post-training production was compared with their pre-training production. The result shows that post-training VOT values of voiced stops became closer to those of native English speakers in all four groups. Hence, it can be inferred that vowel pronunciation training is effective for correcting pronunciation of voiced vowels by analyzing the change of the quality of following vowels(especially low vowels) and the degree of giving stress.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.1-7
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relations between phonetic differences among Korean learners' production of English front vowels, pronunciation intelligibility and speaking proficiency test score. To do so, thirty Korean university students were asked (1) to read English text book paragraphs and (2) describe a picture. Two English native raters and one Korean rater evaluated Korean subjects' English pronunciation intelligibility and speaking. In addition, subjects' English vowel productions were acoustically analyzed(F0, F1, F2, vowel duration, intensity). The results of the study show that the vowel quality and pitch of the unstressed vowels and lax vowel are related to the pronunciation intelligibility. In addition, the scores of pronunciation intelligibility and speaking are highly related.

• MALSORI
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• no.60
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• pp.47-66
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• 2006

This study examined the effect of English-language experience on Korean- and Japanese-English late learners' production of English unstressed vowels in terms of four acoustic phonetic features: F0, duration, intensity and vowel reduction. The learners manifested some improvement with experience. The native-like attainment of a phonetic feature, however, was related to the phonological status of that feature in the speakers' native language. The results suggest that the extent to which the non-native speakers' production of English unstressed vowels improved with English-language experience varied as a function of their native language background.

• 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.

• 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.3
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• pp.201-210
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• 2002

This paper explores whether there is correlation between consonants' place and duration of adjacent vowels in English and Korean. The results showed that in English the vowels preceding alveolar stops were in general longer than the vowels before bilabial or velar stops. Consonants appeared to have their inherent length due to their place and to exhibit some compensatory effects on the duration of preceding vowels. This effect can be explained in a physiological term that the tongue tip is the organ which might be more agile in articulatory movement than the tongue body for the velars or the lower lip (and the jaw) for the bilabials is and the shorter production time of the alveolars caused the lengthening of the adjacent vowels. However, this physiological account did not hold in the case of Korean, which exhibited less consistent patterns across speakers for the consonants' place and the vowel duration. The segmental duration seemed to be timed quite consistently within a language but the pattern was not universal across languages.