• MALSORI
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• no.52
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• pp.61-84
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• 2004

This study investigates the Korean native speakers' English liquid perception and production. Perception and production experiments were each conducted twice before and after a short period of explicit learning process of phonetic characteristics of English liquids. The results showed that correlation between perception and production varied depending on factors. In both perception and production, word-final position was the most difficult, and cluster position was the easiest. A considerable improvement was observed in word-initial and medial positions in production, whereas no improvement was achieved in word-final position, especially in production. This study is also concerned with the formant structures of Korean native speakers' production of English liquids in order to see what acoustic features are highly correlated with Korean native speakers' production accuracy of English liquids. The results showed that F2 did not show a high correlation while F3 was a strong correlate of the production accuracy.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.29-36
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• 2010

The purposes of this study are (1) to see if language transfer effect is found in Korean speakers' pronunciation of English stops and to correct them and (2) to investigate the effectiveness of mimicry training and Speech Analyzer training on subjects' pronunciation of English stops. For these purposes, 20 Korean speakers' VOT values of English stops were measured using Speech Analyzer and their post-training production was compared with their pre-training production. The result shows that Korean speakers have no difficulty in correcting pronunciation errors of English voiceless stops and voiced stops and such a result indicates that language transfer effect is not noticed as expected. In addition, the result of pronunciation training shows that the training using Speech Analyzer is more effective than mimicry training.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.51-58
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• 2010

This study investigates the perception and production of English front vowels focusing on the distinction in /i/ vs /I/ and /$\varepsilon$/ vs /$\ae$/ by sixty-one Korean speakers. The first portion of this study focused on the perceptional discrimination by the subjects of two sets of English vowel contrasts, /i/ vs /I/ and /$\varepsilon$/ vs /$\ae$/. In the second portion of the study, the production of these vowels by the same subjects who had participated in the perceptional discrimination test was examined acoustically and subsequently compared with that of the control group comprised of native English speakers. The major results indicate that: (1) In perception tests, Korean subjects can discriminate between /i/ and /I/ relatively well, while many of them were not able to discriminate between /$\varepsilon$/ and /$\ae$/; (2) the Korean subjects, however, have difficulty producing a distinct version of these front vowels; and, (3) The relationship between the perception and production is not significant. These results were analyzed with the concept of "under-differentiation" and "reinterpretation of distinction," as well as how phonetic differences influenced the production and discrimination of front vowels by Korean speakers.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.99-108
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• 2000

The purpose of this experimental study was to investigate characteristics of English vowels as spoken by Korean speakers. Ten English mono-syllabic words were spoken six times by six male college students who were born and raised in Seoul. Formant frequencies were measured from sound spectrograms made by the PC Quirer. Results showed that Korean speakers similarly pronounced /i/ and /I/, /u/ and /$\upsilon$/, and /$\varepsilon$/ and /${\ae}$/ respectively. It seems that Korean speakers can not differentiate tense vowels(/i/, /u/) from lax vowels(/i/, /$\upsilon$/) and pronounce low vowels such as /${\ae}$/, /a/, /c/ clearly. It is necessary that Korean speakers practice the correct movements of the jaw, tongue, and lips when they pronounce English vowels.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.51-66
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• 2001

This paper compares different uses of downgraders by Korean English speakers (KES) with those by American English native speakers (AENS) in their requestive e-mail. Three different situations in which social power and distance were controlled were set up to examine and compare the participants' politeness strategies in requestive e-mail. It was found that the KESs' use of downgraders appeared differently from the AENSs' use qualitatively and quantitatively across three situations. The AENSs used downgraders almost three times as more, resulting in a much more mitigated and polite effect in requests. The AENSs' requests were mostly modified by syntactic modifiers, such as aspect, tense, conditional, and consultative devices. On the other hand, the KESs' requests were modified mostly by politeness markers and conditionals in a limited number of requests.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.167-180
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• 2005

The present study examines the phonetic realizations of the unstressed weak vowel /e/ in English words produced by native and Korean ESL speakers. Traditionally, the stressed elements in utterance are considered to be prominent. In this sense, the unstressed weak vowel /e/ is predicted to be shorter in length, lower in pitch and intensity than the stressed vowels. The experiment shows that native English speakers correlate the unstressed weak vowel /e/ with both shorter duration and lower pitch; Korean ESL speakers correlate it with lower pitch only. We cannot find any significant statistical difference in intensity between /e/ and the stressed vowels in both cases. This study suggests it is important to acquire and produce the correct prosodic correlates of the unstressed weak vowel /e/ for Korean ESL speakers to command more natural English intonation, since /e/ is the most common vowel in English speech and consists of the English foot rhythm along with stressed vowels.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.107-115
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• 2015

In this paper English word-final /s/ and /z/ produced by English and Korean speakers were investigated. The durations and maximum intensities of these fricatives with those of their preceding vowels were compared. In the English speakers' productions, they relied on the ratio of the durations of them as well as the ratio of the maximum intensities of them. In their productions, the /s/ was long in duration and high in maximum intensity and its preceding vowel was short in duration whereas the /z/ was short in duration and low in maximum intensity and its preceding vowel was long in duration. However, the maximum intensities of the preceding vowels were not different in their productions. But in the Korean speakers' productions, they relied on neither the ratio of the durations of them nor the ratio of the maximum intensities of them. In their productions, the /s/ and the /z/ were not different in durations, but the duration of the preceding vowel of the /s/ was shorter than that of /z/, and the maximum intensities of the /s/ and /z/ as well as their preceding vowels were not different. Based on these results we can conclude that in distinguishing /CVs/ and /CVz/ words, English speakers used durations and intensities of the word-final fricatives in addition to durations of the vowels whereas Koreans used only durations of the vowels.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.51-60
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• 2010

This study is to examine how Korean speakers realize English stress on the homographic words. Experiments were performed by Korean speakers three times, before stress instruction, immediately after instruction, and six weeks after instruction. First, duration, fundamental frequency, and intensity of the vowel in a stressed syllable of three homographic words produced by Korean speakers were compared with those of native speakers of English. The result shows that when the words were used as nouns, before instruction Korean speakers had shorter duration and lower fundamental frequency in the stressed vowel than the native speakers, which indicates that Korean speakers did not assign the primary stress on the first syllable of the nouns. After instruction, the values of duration and fundamental frequency were increased and the differences between two groups were decreased. Next, the values of these stress features measured three times were analyzed in order to find out how they changed through instruction. The analysis shows that after instruction the values of three features were increased compared to the ones before instruction, and that the biggest change was in duration of the vowel and the next was fundamental frequency. Six weeks after instruction, the values of duration and intensity were decreased than those immediately after instruction. This means that instruction is helpful for Korean speakers to assign the stress for the English homographic words, and that instruction and practice are needed repeatedly.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 1996.10a
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• pp.574-575
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• 1996

The theme of the current study is to study intonation of Taiwanese(Tw.) by comparing the intonation patterns in native language (Ll), target language (L2), and interlanguage (IL). Studies on interlanguage have dealt primarily with segments. Though there were studies which addressed to the issues of interlanguage intonation, more often than not, they didn't offer evidence for the statement, and the hypotheses were mainly based on impression. Therefore, a formal description of interlanguage intonation is necessary for further development in this field. The basic assumption of this study is that native speakers of one language perceive and produce a second language in ways closely related to the patterns of their first language. Several studies on interlanguage prosody have suggested that prosodic structure and rules are more subject to transfer than certain other phonological phenomena, given their abstract structural nature and generality(Vogel 1991). Broselow(1988) also shows that interlanguage may provide evidence for particular analyses of the native language grammar, which may not be available from the study of the native language alone. Several research questions will be addressed in the current study: A. How does duration vary among native and nominative utterances\ulcorner The results shows that there is a significant difference in duration between the beginning English learners, and the native speakers of American English for all the eleven English sentences. The mean duration shows that the beginning English learners take almost twice as much time (1.70sec.), as Americans (O.97sec.) to produce English sentences. The results also show that American speakers take significant longer time to speak all ten Taiwanese utterances. The mean duration shows that Americans take almost twice as much time (2.24sec.) as adult Taiwanese (1.14sec.) to produce Taiwanese sentences. B. Does proficiency level influence the performance of interlanguage intonation\ulcorner Can native intonation patterns be achieved by a non-native speaker\ulcorner Wenk(1986) considers proficiency level might be a variable which related to the extent of Ll influence. His study showed that beginners do transfer rhythmic features of the Ll and advanced learners can and do succeed in overcoming mother-tongue influence. The current study shows that proficiency level does play a role in the acquisition of English intonation by Taiwanese speakers. The duration and pitch range of the advanced learners are much closer to those of the native American English speakers than the beginners, but even advanced learners still cannot achieve native-like intonation patterns. C. Do Taiwanese have a narrower pitch range in comparison with American English speakers\ulcorner Ross et. al.(1986) suggests that the presence of tone in a language significantly inhibits the unrestricted manipulation of three acoustical measures of prosody which are involved in producing local pitch changes in the fundamental frequency contour during affective signaling. Will the presence of tone in a language inhibit the ability of speakers to modulate intonation\ulcorner The results do show that Taiwanese have a narrower pitch range in comparison with American English speakers. Both advanced (84Hz) and beginning learners (58Hz) of English show a significant narrower FO range than that of Americans' (112Hz), and the difference is greater between the beginning learners' group and native American English speakers.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.55-66
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• 2006

A purpose of this study is to investigate the acoustic characteristics of English stress produced by the two groups of South Kyungsang (henceforth, SK) Korean speakers: high-proficiency and low-proficiency with reference to English native speakers. Another purpose is to compare results from the high- and low-proficiency SK Korean subjects with those of the native speakers, and to provide an analytical account of how approximate the high-proficiency SK Korean subjects' production is to the native speakers' and how different the low-proficiency SK Korean subjects' is from the native speakers'. Results indicated that the native speakers' main strategy used in producing stressed syllables was duration while the high-proficiency SK Korean subjects' was predominantly pitch-oriented. The low-proficiency SK Korean subjects' pitch patterns showed regularity, emphasizing the penultimate syllable with pitch. In comparing duration among the three groups, both groups of the SK Korean subjects became more even in their duration values for each syllable as the structure of the word or the sentence became more complex.