• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.81-87
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• 2019

The purpose of the current study is to investigate the realization of speech rhythm in English as spoken by Korean learners of English. The study particularly aims to examine the rhythm metrics of English read speech by learners who speak Busan or the South Kyungsang dialect of Korean. Twenty-four learners whose L1 is Busan Korean and eight native speakers of English read a passage wherein five sentences were segmented and labeled as vocalic and intervocalic intervals. Various rhythm metrics such as %V, Varcos, and Pairwise Variability Indexes (PVIs) were calculated. The results show that Korean learners read English sentences with significantly more vocalic and consonantal intervals at a slower speech rate than native English speakers. The analyses of rhythm metrics revealed that when the speech rate was not normalized, Korean learners' English showed more variability in the length of consonantal and vocalic intervals. However, speech-rate-normalized rhythm metrics for vocalic intervals indicated that Korean learners transferred their L1 rhythmic structures (a syllable-timed language) into their L2 speech (a stress-timed language). Overall, the results suggest that Korean learners' English reflects the rhythmic characteristics of their L1. The effect of the learners' L1 dialect on the realization of L2 speech rhythm is also speculated.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.71-79
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• 2019

This study aims to investigate the rhythmic patterns in the English speech produced by Chinese learners of English who learn English as a foreign language (EFL learners). Utilizing interval-based rhythm metrics, namely, VarcoC, VarcoV, nPVI-C, nPVI-V, and %V, the study compared the rhythmic differences in English speech between ten native speakers from the United States and forty Chinese EFL learners from mainland China. A sentence elicitation task consisting of thirty picture prompts and corresponding thirty stimuli sentences with at least five vocalic and four consonantal intervals was conducted. Statistical results reveal that both Chinese advanced learners and beginners had significantly lower degree of stress-timed in their English speech, indicating that the acquisition of the L2 speech rhythm was influenced by the learners' L1 rhythmic pattern. In addition, the results also show that the Chinese advanced learners had significantly higher degree of stress-timed in their English speech than beginners and showed no significant difference with native speakers in VarcoC and nPVI-C. These results indicate that the direction of L2 speech rhythm development was from more syllable-timed to more stress-timed.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.19-28
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• 2022

The current study was designed to explore whether taking English pronunciation classes could improve the realization of English rhythm by Korean learners of English. Specifically, this study used various rhythm metrics to examine the extent to which the learners' speech became rhythmically similar to the target language after taking classes that focused on English pronunciation. Sixteen learners who took a 15-week English pronunciation course at a university read an English passage twice (at the beginning and the end of the semester). The rhythm metrics such as Deltas, Varcos, and Pairwise Variability Indices were calculated for the learners' speech, as well as that of 8 native speakers of English. The results demonstrated that the learners' speech was slower, and they put more frequent within-sentence pauses than the native speakers even after the classes. The analyses also indicated that the speech recorded at the beginning of the semester was rhythmically much more different from the target language than at the end of the semester. After the classes, however, the learners' consonantal intervals became much more target-like, while the vocalic intervals were rhythmically even further from those in the target language. Overall, the findings suggested that the pronunciation classes helped the learners to produce English speech that was rhythmically similar to the native speakers.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.141-149
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• 2009

An emphasis on teaching suprasegmental features of English, specifically English rhythm, is essential in order to improve the 'intelligibility' of the pronunciation of Korean EFL learners among interlocutors who use English as a Lingua Franca(ELF). By redefining the ELF suggested by Jenkins (2000, 2002), this paper argues that Lingua Franca Core (LFC) must include suprasegmental features such as 'stress-based rhythm' and word stress. However, because 'isochrony' is difficult to measure in a foot, the rhythm unit must be expanded to an intonational phrase which has prominence in it and the rhythm of the unit can be measured by calculating the duration of each segment in context The rhythmic pattern of Korean learners of English and that of native speakers or other non-native English speakers can then be calculated and compared by using correlation coefficients of the segmental duration. In terms of sociolinguistic factors, improving the 'comprehensibility' and 'accentedness' of Korean EFL learners' pronunciation is also important in international communication, which calls for more emphasis on suprasegmental features.

• MALSORI
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• no.40
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• pp.29-49
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• 2000

This study has two aim: one is to clarify the restructuring of English in utterance and the other is to make use of text-setting to be applied to getting accustomed to the English rhythm and pronunciation. Clitics prove to play a crucial role on the English restructuring, and are found to be attached to their previous and to their next head or host, thus forming, respectively, an on-cliticized rhythm, trochee and a pro-cliticized rhythm, iambus. En-cliticization proves to be preferred to pro-cliticization in most types of English rhythms. Accordingly, the restructuring turn out to occur all over the levels of the Prosodic Hierarchy. That is, syllables, words and clitic groups are restructured in poetry as well as in song words, which means the necessity of restructuring throughout the levels of the Prosodic Hierarchy from the syllable to the utterance. The present study suggests a good use of a rhythmic textsetting for learners of English to get accustomed to the stress-timed rhythm as well as to such changes in pronunciation as reductions, deletions, resolutions, contractions, and rhythms in English.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.49-55
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• 2009

This study investigates whether rhythm metrics can be used to capture the rhythmic differences between spontaneous and read English speech. Transcription of spontaneous speech tokens extracted from a corpus is read by three English native speakers to generate the corresponding read speech tokens. Two data sets are compared in terms of seven rhythm measures that are suggested by previous studies. Results show that there is a significant difference in the values of vowel-based metrics (VarcoV and nPVI-V) between spontaneous and read speech. This manifests a greater variability in vocalic intervals in spontaneous speech than in read speech. The current study is especially meaningful as it demonstrates a way in which speech styles can be differentiated and parameterized in numerical terms.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2002.11a
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• pp.169-172
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• 2002

English is one of the stress-timed languages and has much more dynamic rhythm, stress and the tendency toward the isochronism of stressed syllables. It goes with various English utterance restructuring, irrespective of the pauses by syntactic boundaries, and post-lexically phonological phenomena. Specifically in the real speech acts, the natural utterances of fluent speakers or the broadcasting speech cause much more various English restructuring and phonological phenomena. This has been an obstacle for students in speaking fluent English and understanding normal speech. Therefore, this study tried to focus the most problematic factor in English speaking and listening difficulty on English restructuring and post-lexically phonological phenomena caused by stress-timed rhythm and, second, to point out the importance of teaching English rhythm bearing that in mind.

• MALSORI
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• no.66
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• pp.41-59
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• 2008

Knowledge in linguistic rhythm of the target language plays a major role in foreign language proficiency. This study attempts to discover valid rhythm features that can be utilized in automatic assessment of non-native English pronunciation. Eight previously proposed and two novel rhythm metrics are investigated with 360 English read speech tokens obtained from 27 Korean learners and 9 native speakers. It is found that some of the speech-rate normalized interval measures and above-word level metrics are effective enough to be further applied for automatic scoring as they are significantly correlated with speakers' proficiency levels. It is also shown that metrics need to be dynamically selected depending upon the structure of target sentences. Results from a preliminary auto-scoring experiment through a Multi Regression analysis suggest that appropriate control of unexpected input utterances is also desirable for better performance.

• 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.

• 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.