• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.115-124
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• 2010

The current study investigated the role of acoustic correlates of domain-initial strengthening in lexical segmentation of a non-native language. In a series of cross-modal identity-priming experiments, native Korean listeners heard English auditory stimuli and made lexical decision to visual targets (i.e., written words). The auditory stimuli contained critical two word sequences which created temporal lexical ambiguity (e.g., 'mill#company', with the competitor 'milk'). There was either an IP boundary or a word boundary between the two words in the critical sequences. The initial CV of the second word (e.g., [$k_{\Lambda}$] in 'company') was spliced from another token of the sequence in IP- or Wd-initial positions. The prime words were postboundary words (e.g., company) in Experiment 1, and preboundary words (e.g., mill) in Experiment 2. In both experiments, Korean listeners showed priming effects only in IP contexts, indicating that they can make use of IP boundary cues of English in lexical segmentation of English. The acoustic correlates of domain-initial strengthening were also exploited by Korean listeners, but significant effects were found only for the segmentation of postboundary words. The results therefore indicate that L2 listeners can make use of prosodically driven phonetic detail in lexical segmentation of L2, as long as the direction of those cues are similar in their L1 and L2. The exact use of the cues by Korean listeners was, however, different from that found with native English listeners in Cho, McQueen, and Cox (2007). The differential use of the prosodically driven phonetic cues by the native and non-native listeners are thus discussed.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.53-61
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• 2011

The present work is a follow-up study to that of Han, Choi, Lim and Lee (2011), where an asymmetry in the source segments eliciting the interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit (ISIB) was found such that the vowels which did not match any vowel of the Korean language were likely to elicit more ISIB than matched vowels. In order to identify the source of the stronger ISIB in non-matched vowels, acoustic analyses of the stimuli were performed. Two pairs of English front vowels [i] vs. [I], and $[{\varepsilon}]$ vs. $[{\ae}]$ were recorded by English native talkers and two groups of Korean learners according to their English proficiency, and then their vowel duration and the frequencies of the first two formants (F1, F2) were measured. The results demonstrated that the non-matched vowels such as [I], and $[{\ae}]$ produced by Korean talkers seemed to show more deviated acoustic characteristics from those of the natives, with longer duration and with closer formant values to the matched vowels, [i] and $[{\varepsilon}]$, than those of the English natives. Combining the results of acoustic measurements in the present study and those of word identification in Han et al. (2011), we suggest that relatively better performance in word identification by Korean talkers/listeners than the native English talkers/listeners is associated with the shared interlanguage of Korean talkers and listeners.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 1997.07a
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• pp.92-114
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• 1997

This study is aimed to grasp the actual problems of the perception of English rhythm and intonation structure by Korean University students who have studied English in the secondary schools for the past six years, and to establish the systems of English rhythm and intonation structure for the Korean students of English. For this study, the listening test is provided, and 100 students are chosen as the subjects of the study. The noticeable findings are summarized as follows: (1) Koreans perceive the words stress comparatively well in nonsense words, unfamiliar place names, and familiar word. (2) Koreans do not perceive the isochrony of English rhythm well enough. The perception of the sentence stress is very unstable, especially in the sentence involved in polysyllabic words, compound words, and 'emphatic stress' pr 'contrastive stress'(or in the different rhythmic patterns). (3) Koreans do not perceive the nucleus well enough. The perception of the nucleus is more stable in content words than in function words, at the end of a sentence than in the middle of a sentence, and in monosyllabic words than in the polysyllabic words. (4) Koreans do not perceive the boundary(or pause) of intonation group well enough. The perception of the pause is unstable in the long or complex sentence. (5) Koreans discriminate the meaning of English word stress comparatively well, especially in disyllabic words. But the discrimination is somewhat unstable in polysyllabic words and between 'adjective' and 'verb' (6) Koreans' discrimination of the intonation meaning is below the level. Koreans do not perceive the differences of intonation meaning according to the pitch accent or the focus. In conclusion, the writer will propose the procedures for the teaching of rhythm and intonation in the following order: word stress drill longrightarrowstressed and reduced syllables drilllongrightarrowrhythm group drilllongrightarrowthe varying rhythm drilllongrightarrowsentence stress drilllongrightarrownucleus drill longrightarrowintonation group drilllongrightarrowlong utterance drill of more than two intonation group.

• Proceedings of the Korea Contents Association Conference
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• 2009.05a
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• pp.1092-1096
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• 2009

While Korean allows the same consonants at the coda of the preceding syllable and at the onset of the following syllable, English does not allow the geminate consonant in the same position. Due to this difference between Korean and English, Korean learners of English tend to incorrectly produce geminate consonants for English geminate graphemes as in summer. Based on this observation, a pilot study was designed to investigate how Korean learners of English perceive and produce English doubleton graphemes and singleton graphemes. Twenty Korean college students were asked to perform a forced-choice perception test as well as a production test for the 36 real word stimuli which consist of near minimal pairs of singleton and doubleton graphemes. The result showed that the accuracy rates for the word with singleton graphemes were relatively high both in perception and production (78.6% and 76.1%, respectively), while those for the word with doubleton graphemes were low both in perception and production (55.3% and 61.7%, respectively). Also, spectrographic analyses were provided where more production errors were witnessed in doubleton grapheme words than singleton grapheme words.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.261-280
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• 2009

This study focuses on providing the pedagogical implications of stress in English pronunciation teaching since stress is one the most important characteristic factors in English pronunciation (Bolinger, 1976; Brown, 1994; Celce-Murcia, Brinton & Goodwin, 1996; Kreidler, 1989). The author investigated stress production regarding in terms of duration, pitch, and intensity by a group of native speakers of English and a group of low-proficiency South Kyungsang Korean college students for their pre-test. For both of the pre- and post-test, the same stimuli, which consisted of a one-syllable word, two two-syllable words, three three-syllable words, and three four-syllable words, were used along with the various sentence positions: isolation, initial, medial, and final. Soft ware programs, ALVIN and Praat, were used to record and analyze the data. Since Celce-Murcia et al. (1996), Klatt (1975), and Ladefoged (2001) treat duration of the stressed syllable more significantly than other factors, pitch and intensity, with respect to the listener's point of view, the author developed a special method of teaching English stress using a traditional Korean drum to emphasize duration. In addition, the results from the native speakers' production showed that their main strategy to realize stress was through lengthening stressed syllables. After six weeks of stress instruction using the drum, the production of the native speakers and the SK Korean participants from the pre- and post-test were compared. The results from the post-test indicated that the participants showed great improvement not only in duration but also in pitch after the stress instruction. Pitch improvement was unexpected but well-explained by the statement that long vowels receive accent in loan word adaptation in North Kyungsang Korean. The results also showed that the Korean participants' pitch values became more even in their duration values for each syllable as the structure of the word or the sentence became more complex, due to their dependency upon their L1.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.273-290
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• 2011

This paper presents a case study involving one Korean primary school student and people around him in order to explore the reading process in English of a young Korean EFL learner and to investigate the social context in which his reading takes place. Six participants were included in the study (one primary school student and five adult participants). The student participant was asked to read a text in English and translate what he read into Korean and the teacher participants were asked to listen to the student's reading. Semi-structured interview was used to collect data from the student as well as five adult participants (his private tutor, his parent, his state school teacher, and two other state school teachers). The analysis reveals four characteristics of the way a young EFL learner approaches reading: word-by-word reading, disconnected word recognition, selective use of cues, and lack of awareness of difficulties. The four characteristics of Kilsu's reading suggest that reading can become a wild guessing game for young foreign learners, if they give selective attention to unimportant cues while reading. The pedagogical implications of this study are also discussed to help teachers designing reading lessons for young learners.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.33-51
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• 2008

Difference of learner speech and loanword phonology is investigated in terms of Korean learners' speech and their loanword adaptation of English words with a post-vocalic word-final stop. When we compared the speech of 12 Korean learners in mid-intermediate level with that of eight English speakers, the learner speech did not reflect loanword phonology of the vowel insertion after a voiced word-final stop (e.g., rib$[\dotplus]$, bad$[\dotplus]$, gag$[\dotplus]$ vs. tip[=], cat[=], book[=]), but, instead, the target phonology of vowel lengthening before a voiced word-final stop (e.g., rib[r.I:b], CAD$[k{\ae}:d]$, bag$[b{\ae}:g]$ vs. rip[rI.p], cat$[k{\ae}t]$, back$[b{\ae}k])$. A longitudinal study of learner speech before and after instruction showed some development toward the acquisition of target phonology. The results indicate that learner speech departs from loanword phonology, and approaches to target speech in a faster rate than direct ratio. Thus, native phonology predicts loanword phonology, but lends little support to learner speech. Our results also indicate that loanword phonology is constant, while learner speech changes toward the acquisition of target phonology.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.43-50
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• 2017

These days voice models of speech recognition software are sophisticated enough to process the natural speech of people without any previous training. However, not much research has reported on the use of speech recognition tools in the field of pronunciation education. This paper examined Google speech recognition of a short English paragraph produced by Korean college students in clear and casual speech styles in order to diagnose and resolve students' pronunciation problems. Thirty three Korean college students participated in the recording of the English paragraph. The Google soundwriter was employed to collect data on the word recognition rates of the paragraph. Results showed that the total word recognition rate was 73% with a standard deviation of 11.5%. The word recognition rate of clear speech was around 77.3% while that of casual speech amounted to 68.7%. The reasons for the low recognition rate of casual speech were attributed to both individual pronunciation errors and the software itself as shown in its fricative recognition. Various distributions of unrecognized words were observed depending on each participant and proficiency groups. From the results, the author concludes that the speech recognition software is useful to diagnose each individual or group's pronunciation problems. Further studies on progressive improvements of learners' erroneous pronunciations would be desirable.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2000.07a
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• pp.199-199
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• 2000

Korean stops are 3 system: aspirated, fortis, lenis, whereas English stops are 2 system: voiced, voiceless. Because in Korean, lenis stop is realized by slight aspirated voiceless stop, it is likely to produce English word initial voiced stop as voiceless stop. We divide subjects into three group-native, experienced, unexperienced- and investigate differences between group. VOT of experienced group IS same as native group, but VOT of unexperienced group is longer than native group. VOt of unexperienced group is 1.8 times than native group. We survey whether the height of following vowel influences VOT of initial stop. As a result, for all group, VOT followed by low vowel is shorter than VOT followed by high vowel. But this tendency is more salient in unexperienced group. For high vowel, VOT of unexperienced group is 2.05 times than native group, whereas for low vowel, it is just 1.55 times. The unexperienced pronounce well English word initial voiced stop followed by low vowel than high vowel. Samples are divided into two group according to type of coda consonant- nasal and voiceless stop. But average of VOT is similar and there is no significant difference between two groups. There is no influence by type of coda consonant. The average of phrases is compared to the average of isolated words. In the case of natives and experienced, there is no significant differences between phrases and words, but in the case of unexperienced, VOT of phrases becomes shorter than words. But VOT of unexperienced is still longer than native group.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• summer
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• pp.103-109
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• 2004

In NLP (Natural Language Processing) tasks, the highest difficulty which computers had to face with, is the built-in ambiguity of Natural Languages. To disambiguate it, formerly, they based on human-devised rules. Building such a complete rule-set is time-consuming and labor-intensive task whilst it doesn't cover all the cases. Besides, when the scale of system increases, it is very difficult to control that rule-set. So, recently, many NLP tasks have changed from rule-based approaches into corpus-based approaches with large annotated corpora. Corpus-based NLP tasks for such popular languages as English, French, etc. have been well studied with satisfactory achievements. In contrast, corpus-based NLP tasks for Vietnamese are at a deadlock due to absence of annotated training data. Furthermore, hand-annotation of even reasonably well-determined features such as part-of-speech (POS) tags has proved to be labor intensive and costly. In this paper, we present our building an annotated English-Vietnamese parallel aligned corpus named EVC to train for Vietnamese-related NLP tasks such as Word Segmentation, POS-tagger, Word Order transfer, Word Sense Disambiguation, English-to-Vietnamese Machine Translation, etc.