• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.1-11
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• 2022

The purpose of this study is to investigate the difference of vowel duration due to the voicing of word-final consonants in English and its relation to the types of word-final consonants (stops vs. fricatives), (partial) devoicing, and stop releasing. Addtionally, this study attempts to interpret the findings from the functional view that the vowels before voiced consonants are produced with a longer duration in order to enhance the salience of the voicing of word-final consonants. This study conducted a recording experiment with English native speakers, and measured the vowel duration, the degree of (partial) devoicing of word-final voiced consonants and the release of word-final stops. First, the results showed that the ratio of the duration difference was not influenced by the types of word-final consonants. Second, it was revealed that the higher the degree of (partial) devoicing of word-final voiced consonants, the longer vowel duration before word-final voiced consonants, which was compatible with the prediction based on the functional view. Lastly, the ratio of the duration difference was greater when the word-final stops were uttered with the release compared to when uttered without the release, which was not consistent with the functional view. These results suggest that it is not sufficient enough to explain the voicing effect by its function of distinguishing the voicing of word-final consonants.

• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.369-386
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• 2001

This paper will show that traditional approaches to the derivation of different negative words have been of an essentially hypothetical nature, based on either linguists' intuitions or rather scant evidence, and that native-speaker dictionary entries show meaning potentials (rather than meanings) which are in fact linguistic and cognitive prototypes. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that using a large corpus of natural language can provide better answers to questions about word-formation (i.e., with particular reference to negative prefixation) than any other source of information.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2001.06c
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• pp.203-206
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• 2001

In the EKMT system, the part of Korea generation makes Korea sentence by using information obtained in the part of transfer. In the case of Korea generation, the conventional EKMT system don't arrange hierarchical word order and performs word order in the only modifier word. This paper proposes Korean adverb odering rule in English-Korean Machine Translation system which generates Korean sentence.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.1-23
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• 2004

This article reports a bi-directional interlanguage study designed to investigate the initial state of L2 acquisition with regard to English and Korean wh-questions. Based on the UG system in line with the minimalist theory, it was hypothesized that the L2 initial state is characterized by the most economical form of syntax in which no overt wh-movement to Spec-CP is assumed. Results of the early interlanguage study showed that 1) L1 Korean learners of L2 English predominantly produced wh-questions with the fronted wh-word, but without productive wh-movement to the Spec-CP position; and 2) L1 English learners of L2 Korean overwhelmingly produced wh-questions with the wh-word remaining in-situ. These results were interpreted as supporting the minimalist account of the L2 initial grammar in that no overt syntactic wh-movement were adopted in early interlanguages of both English and Korean regardless of the learner's L1.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.13-20
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• 2023

This study explores the potential of automated speech recognition (ASR) in assessing English learners' pronunciation. We employed ASR technology, acknowledged for its impartiality and consistent results, to analyze speech audio files, including synthesized speech, both native-like English and Korean-accented English, and speech recordings from a native English speaker. Through this analysis, we establish baseline values for the word error rate (WER). These were then compared with those obtained for human raters in perception experiments that assessed the speech productions of 30 first-year college students before and after taking a pronunciation course. Our sub-group analyses revealed positive training effects for Whisper, an ASR tool, and human raters, and identified distinct human rater strategies in different assessment aspects, such as proficiency, intelligibility, accuracy, and comprehensibility, that were not observed in ASR. Despite such challenges as recognizing accented speech traits, our findings suggest that digital tools such as ASR can streamline the pronunciation assessment process. With ongoing advancements in ASR technology, its potential as not only an assessment aid but also a self-directed learning tool for pronunciation feedback merits further exploration.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• no.3
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• pp.231-248
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• 1997

With the trend of globalization more people are absorbing in the English learning programs. Not a few attend even the English-Korean translation training course to be semi-professional translators, but we English teachers have already experienced that it is not so easy to translate any language into another, and that it is far more difficult to translate poetry. Much time has been devoted to investigating the problems of translating poetry than any other mode. Poetry translation theory is concerned with the problem of faithfulness to the original poetry. To be a good translator we must fully understand the sound and sense of the original work. But when in translating English poetry into Korean we feel keenly our limits of understanding the sound and style of English poetry, and of expressing them into Korean. Even our sense-oriented translation is far from satisfactory. We often make quite a few mistranslation. Another immediate problem is that of alternation between word-for-word translation and free translation method, but first of all, we should have a perfect knowledge and understanding in English, and a good command of our mother tongue. We should also have a sound interpretation ability because poetry translation is based on the interpretation of the original, and on the shaping of that interpretation. Some doubts have been raised over the feasibility of poetry translation. They say it is not possible to combine in another language the emotion, the form, the style, the musical devices of English poetry. Yet the art of translation has been practiced everywhere in the world. Through this art we can share our experience and culture with foreigners and theirs with us.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.47-61
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• 2007

The purpose of this paper is to survey the major elements that have changed English from a synthetic language to an analytic one. Therefore, this paper has looked at the differences between synthetic languages and analytic ones. In synthetic languages, the relation of words in a sentence is synthetically determined by means of inflections, while in analytic languages, the functions of words in a sentence are analytically determined by means of word order and function words. Thus, Old English with full inflectional systems shows the synthetic nature. However, in the course of time, Old English inflections came to be lost by phonetic changes and operation, which made English dependent on word order and function words to signal the relation of words in a sentence. The major phonetic changes that have shifted English are the change of final /m/ to /n/, the leveling of unstressed vowels, the loss of final /n/, and the decay of schwa in final syllables. These changes led to reduction of inflections of English as well as the loss of grammatical gender. The operation of analogy, the tendency of language to follow certain patterns and to adapt a less common form to a more familiar one, has also played an important role in changing English.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.51-65
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• 2011

This study attempts to investigate the interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit for listeners (ISIB-L), examining Chinese talkers' production of English liquids and its perception of native listeners and non-native Chinese and Korean listeners. An Accent Judgment Task was conducted to measure non-native talkers' and listeners' phonological proficiency, and two levels of proficiency groups (high and low) participated in the experiment. The English liquids /l/ and /r/ produced by Chinese talkers were considered in terms of positions (syllable initial and final), contexts (segment, word and sentence) and lexical density (minimal vs. nonminimal pair) to see if these factors play a role in ISIIB-L. Results showed that both matched and mismatched interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit for listeners occurred except for the initial /l/. Non-native Chinese and Korean listeners, though only with high proficiency, were more accurate at identifying initial /r/, final /l/ and final /r/, but initial /l/ was significantly more intelligible to native listeners than non-native listeners. There was evidence of contextual and lexical density effects on ISIB-L. No ISIB-L was demonstrated in sentence context, but both matched and mismatched ISIB-L was observed in word context; this finding held true for only high proficiency listeners. Listeners recognized the targets better in the non-minimal pair (sparse density) environment than the minimal pair (higher density) environment. These findings suggest that ISIB-L for English liquids is influenced by talkers' and listeners' proficiency, syllable position in association with L1 and L2 phonological structure, context, and word neighborhood density.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.19-25
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• 2020

This study examined thirty-one Korean students' pronunciation of an English passage using a speech recognition application, Speechnotes, and two Canadian raters' evaluations of their speech according to the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) band criteria to assess the possibility of using the application as a teaching aid for pronunciation education. The results showed that the grand average percentage of correctly recognized words was 77.7%. From the moderate recognition rate, the pronunciation level of the participants was construed as intermediate and higher. The recognition rate varied depending on the composition of the content words and the function words in each given sentence. Frequency counts of unrecognized words by group level and word type revealed the typical pronunciation problems of the participants, including fricatives and nasals. The IELTS bands chosen by the two native raters for the rainbow passage had a moderately high correlation with each other. A moderate correlation was reported between the number of correctly recognized content words and the raters' bands, while an almost a negligible correlation was found between the function words and the raters' bands. From these results, the author concludes that the speech recognition application could constitute a partial aid for diagnosing each individual's or the group's pronunciation problems, but further studies are still needed to match human raters.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.20 no.10
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• pp.157-166
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• 2020

This study is a descriptive analysis of Korean business names listed on KOSDAQ (Korea Securities Dealers Automated Quotation) from a morphological perspective. A total of 1,358 business names on KOSDAQ are collected and analyzed in terms of origins and morphological structure. The analysis exhibits the monopoly of English: only 20% of the names are composed of only Korean elements, including Sino-Chinese, while 76% of them contain some form of English elements. It is pointed out that those English elements are not borrowed from English but are created in Korea and participate further word formation processes. In terms of word formation methods, compounding and shortening are most common, taking up 90% of all names. Multiple derived forms are used from an identical origin word, and even bound forms in English are taken and used as independent words, regardless of their original status in English. It is argued that Korean English is not entirely negative and should be considered as part of World Englishes.