• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.11 no.4
• /
• pp.223-232
• /
• 2004

This study investigated and compared the acoustic characteristics of the Korean stop sound [k'] in three different phonological environments: the tensified lenis stop [k'] as observed in /prek+kaci/, the fortis stop /k'/ as in /pre+k'aci/, and the fortis stop /k'/ following an obstruent as in /prek+k'aci/. The specific research question was whether or not the tensified lenis stop shares all the acoustic features with the other two kinds of fortis stops. The acoustic measures adopted in this study were H1*-H2*, VOT, length of stop closure, and $F_0$. The major findings were that the three stops showed no significant difference in all the acoustic measures except the length of stop closure. The fortis stop /k'/ following an obstruent showed significantly longer duration of stop closure than the other two stops, both of which showed no significant difference. Based on these phonetic results, this study argued that, for the proper phonological description of post-obstruent tensification, the phonological feature [slack vocal folds] of a lenis stop should be changed into [stiff vocal folds, constricted glottis] that the fortis stops should have.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
• /
• v.11 no.4
• /
• pp.97-120
• /
• 2005

Production and perception of second language sounds are typically influenced by second language learners' native language sounds. In this study we investigate how the Korean language influences Korean speakers' production of English alphabets. In the experiment conducted to prepare for this study 16 native speakers of Korean pronounced English alphabets. Then three native speakers of English evaluated the Korean subjects' pronunciation of them. The results show that the Korean subjects' native language (i.e., Korean) influences their production of the English alphabets. When Korean has sounds corresponding to English alphabets, the English subjects rate the Korean subjects' production of them good. For instance, Korean has voiceless stop phonemes, hence their production of English alphabets was rated good by the English subjects. The Korean subjects' production of English alphabets containing the sounds that do not exist in Korean was rated poor by the English subjects. For instance, Korean does not have voiced fricative phonemes, hence their production of English alphabets was rated poor.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.13 no.2
• /
• pp.37-44
• /
• 2021

Preliminary findings are reported from five experiments testing the perceived naturalness of word tokens whose vowel durations are altered. The stimuli were minimal pairs of English words ending in a voiced/voiceless plosive. Results show an asymmetric effect of shortening and lengthening of the vowel on the perceived naturalness of the word. Incremental shortening of vowel duration initially shows a stable degree of perceived naturalness but rapidly deteriorates beyond a certain point. On the contrary, only a small degree of lengthening of the vowel made the perceived naturalness of the word quickly decay, but there was a floor effect such that the perceived degree of naturalness does not lower beyond a certain level. Further, the tokens with the original vowel duration were not always scored higher than the stimuli with a small degree of shortening. Future studies should address the issue of speaking rate and the ratio between the vowel and the stop closure duration to better understand the phenomenon. The issue investigated here has implications on the role of prototypical exemplars in the perception of phonotactic naturalness.

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.3
• /
• pp.71-82
• /
• 1998

Five sets of nonsense acoustical stimuli {$[sp{\varepsilon},st{\varepsilon},sk{\varepsilon}],\;[p{\varepsilon},t{\varepsilon},k{\varepsilon}],\;[sb{\varepsilon},sd{\varepsilon},sg{\varepsilon}],\;[b{\varepsilon},d{\varepsilon},g{\varepsilon}],\;['{\varepsilon}b{\varepsilon},'{\varepsilon}d{\varepsilon},'{\varepsilon}g{\varepsilon}]$} were presented for identification of English stops to native speakers of English, Chinese, and Korean. The English speakers perceived stops after /s/ as /p, t, k/; in other contexts as /b, d, g/. In the languages where other distinctions exist, however, the evaluation was different. The results suggest that in English the cue for stops after /s/ was syllable structure constraint: After initial /s/ always /p, t, k/ follow; the cue for the initial stops was aspiration. On the basis of the results, it was concluded that in English we should classify the unaspirated voiceless stops in initial /s/-stop clusters into the phoneme where [$p^{h},t^{h},k^{h}$] are in, and that perception is not only language specific but also context specific.

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.14 no.4
• /
• pp.81-98
• /
• 2007

This study aims to investigate whether shortened vowel duration conditioned by a following voiceless stop induces phonetic reduction of vowel space in English, and whether the reduction appears more in the height dimension than in the backness dimension (Lindblom, 1963; Flemming, 2005). Fifteen native speakers of American English read minimal pairs containing ten American English vowels in [bVd] and [bVt] syllables in a carrier phrase. All the subjects produced shorter vowels in the voiceless than in the voiced context. However, a reduction in vowel space and a raising of low vowels due to the shortened vowel duration were generally not found. To the contrary, the speakers tended to exhibit even more lowering of low vowels in the voiceless context, and vowel space was more commonly compressed in the backness dimension than in the height dimension. Many speakers, in particular, demonstrated fronting of the high back vowel [u] in the voiceless context. It was interpreted that due to a relatively large number of English vowels in the narrower low vowel space, the raising of low vowels may give rise to confusion in vowel contrasts, and therefore the degree of phonetic vowel reduction is restricted in that region. On the other hand, the high vowel region, being relatively spacious in English, allows a certain degree of phonetic vowel reduction in the F2 dimension. It is possible that heavy requirements for maintaining vowel contrasts may cause speakers to overachieve vowel target values, especially when faced with vowels which are difficult to distinguish due to shortened vowel duration, leading to an over-lowering of the low vowels.

• MALSORI
• /
• no.38
• /
• pp.41-70
• /
• 1999

Researches on perception have, in recent years, been increasingly popular as a means of accounting for cross-linguistic sound patterns (Ohala, 1992; Hemming, 1995; Jun, 1995; Steriade, 1997 among others). In loanword phonology, Silverman(1990, 1992) argues that words from a source language are scanned through the perceptual level and that the features perceived by a speaker are stored in the input to be processed according to his/her native language's phonological constraints. The purpose of this paper is to test the validity of Silverman's proposal by examining the correlation between perception and production of Korean learners of English. We specifically focussed on perception and production of stop release by contrasting English loanwords with English words loarned through education to see if there were any significant differences. The results showed that there was no substantive correlation between the Korean speakers' perception of the loanwords pronounced by English speakers and their own production of those words. In the case of English words, however, the Korean speakers' production was closely related with their perception, although some inter-speaker variations were observed. With Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolenksy, 1993) as a theoretical framework of analysis, it was shown that the theory is a useful means of implementing a phonetics-phonology interface and relating perceptual processes with speech production. Specifically, under the assumption that loanwords with [t]~[t/sup h/] alternation (e.g.,'cut') are originally borrowed into Korean as two different input forms, all the alternations could be straightforwardly accounted for in terms of a unified ranking of constraints.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.13 no.3
• /
• pp.21-29
• /
• 2021

The present study investigated how one's cognitive resources are related to speech perception by examining Korean speakers' executive function (EF) capacity and its association with voice onset time (VOT) and f0 sensitivity in identifying Korean stop laryngeal categories (/t'/ vs. /t/ vs. /t^h/). Previously, Kong et al. (under revision) reported that Korean listeners (N = 154) in Seoul and Changwon (Gyeongsang) showed differential group patterns in dialect-specific cue weightings across educational institutions (college, high school, and elementary school). We follow up this study by further relating their EF control (working memory, mental flexibility, and inhibition) to their speech perception patterns to examine whether better cognitive ability would control attention to multiple acoustic dimensions. Partial correlation analyses revealed that better EFs in Korean listeners were associated with greater sensitivity to available acoustic details and with greater suppression of irrelevant acoustic information across subgroups, although only a small set of EF components turned out to be relevant. Unlike Seoul participants, Gyeongsang listeners' f0 use was not correlated with any EF task scores, reflecting dialect-specific cue primacy using f0 as a secondary cue. The findings confirm the link between speech perception and general cognitive ability, providing experimental evidence from Korean listeners.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.16 no.1
• /
• pp.25-31
• /
• 2024

This study examines the perceptual motivation behind dissimilation. Consistent with previous arguments suggesting that dissimilation originates from perception rather than production (Coetzee, 2005; Kiparsky, 2003; Scheer, 2013), we hypothesized that an oral stop with short of voice onset time (VOT) would be recognized as non-aspirated more often when it is followed by an aspirated stop with a long VOT. This hypothesis was tested through a perception experiment in which 32 Korean listeners made judgments on the first consonant of C₁VC₂V words manipulated with C₁ VOT and C₂ types. The results revealed that aspirated-based C₁ was recognized as aspirated or tense depending on the duration of VOT, while lenis-based C₁ was consistently recognized as lenis. The dissimilatory effect of aspirated C₂ was confirmed as anticipated, and furthermore, tense C₂ increased the ratio of tense responses more than aspirated C₂. These results provide evidence of a perceptual bias against recurrent aspirated stops, which may play a role in activating a dissimilatory rule or constraint in a language. The assimilatory effect of tense C₂ is in consistent with findings indicating that word-initial tensification is facilitated by the following tense stop in Korean (Kang & Oh, 2016; H. Kim, 2016).

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
• /
• 2003.10a
• /
• pp.43-49
• /
• 2003

This study reveals the perceptual role of stop release burst to Koreans' recognition of POA(place of articulation) and voicing in the English word-final stops. 10 Korean subjects participated in a perception experiment wherein the stimuli are prepared on the basis of the amount of acoustic information, which includes the release burst. The result shows that i) release burst plays an important role in the recognition of POA in the order of velar, alveolar, and bilabial stops, and ii) the release burst more enhances the correct recognition of voiceless stops than that of voiced stops. This result leads us to conclude that the role of stop release burst differs with respect to the POA and voicing of the stops, and it is possibly related to the different intensity of release in voicing and in each POA.

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.11 no.1
• /
• pp.87-103
• /
• 2004

This study investigates Korean listeners' perception of the English stop epenthesis between the sonorant and fricative segments. Specifically this study investigates 1) how often English epenthetic stops are perceived by native Korean listeners, given the fact that Korean does not allow consonant clusters in codas; and 2) whether perception of the epenthetic stops, which are optional phonetic variations, not phonemes, could be improved without any explicit training. 120 English non-words with a mono-syllable structure of CVC1C2, where C1=/m, n, $\eta$, 1/, and C2=/s, $\theta$, $\int$/, were given to two groups of native Korean listeners, and they were asked to detect the target stops such as [p], [t], and [k]. The number of their responses were computed to determine how often listeners succeed in recovering the string of segments produced by the native English speaker. The results of the present study show that English epenthetic stops are poorly identified by native Korean listeners with low English proficiency, even in the case where stimuli with strong acoustic cues are provided with, but perception of epenthetic stops is closely related with listeners' English proficiency, showing the possibility of the improvement of perception. It further shows that perception of epenthetic stops shows asymmetry between coronal and non-coronal consonants.