• 음성과학
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• 제11권3호
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• pp.69-81
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• 2004

The purpose of this experimental study was to investigate characteristics of Korean vowels uttered by Japanese speakers. Eight Korean Vowels were uttered three times by ten male Korean and Japanese, female Korean and Japanese, respectively. Formant Frequencies were measured from sound spectrograms made by the Pitch Works. Results showed that female Japanese speakers uttered Korean vowels more similar to those uttered by Korean native speakers than did male Japanese speakers.. In particular, male Japanese speakers have articulatory problems pronouncing the back vowels(/ㅓ/, /ㅡ/, /ㅜ/). It appears that the width of male speakers' articulatory movements is comparatively narrower than those of female speakers.

• 음성과학
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• 제10권4호
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• pp.93-103
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• 2003

This study examines the high-low pitch range differences between Korean and native English speakers' utterances of 36 English sentences, and explores the role of the pitch fluctuation range in the pronunciation assessment. Findings are: i) Korean speakers implement half as much pitch fluctuation as the native speakers with the achievement rate of, on an average, 47%. Especially, pitch fluctuation range is below the average in the sentence types of exclamation, yes-no & wh-questions, ii) the reason why Korean speakers' pitch fluctuation range is only half the range of the native speakers is that Korean speakers do not raise the pitch at certain sentence positions so much as the native speakers, and iii) the range of pitch fluctuation plays an important role in distinguishing the utterances of the native speakers from those of Korean speakers, but does not in rating the English utterances among Korean speakers.

• 음성과학
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• 제8권4호
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• pp.193-206
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• 2001

The purpose of this experimental study was to investigate characteristics of English vowels uttered by Korean regional dialect speakers. Ten English mono-syllabic words, and eight Korean mono-syllabic words, were uttered six times by nine female graduate students from three areas: Seoul, Yongnam and Honam. Formant frequencies were measured from sound spectrograms made by the PC Quirer. Results showed that Seoul dialect speakers uttered English vowels more similar to those uttered by English native speakers than did the other dialect speakers. In particular, Yongnam dialect speakers have articulatory problems pronouncing the back vowels(/u/, /$\upsilon$/, /c/), while Honam dialect speakers have problems pronouncing the front vowels(/i/. /I/, /$\varepsilon$/, /$\ae$/). Even though each group has different problems pronouncing English vowels, Korean speakers generally have difficulty in discriminating tense vowels(/i/ and /u/) from the lax vowels(/I/ and /$\upsilon$/). It appears that the width of Korean speakers' articulatory movements is comparatively narrower than those of native English speakers.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제14권1호
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• pp.29-36
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• 2022

The English word-final /rl/ cluster poses a particular problem for Korean learners of English because it is the sequence of two sounds, /r/ and /l/, which are not contrastive in Korean. This study compared the similarity distances between English and Korean speakers' /rl/ productions using the dynamic time warping (DTW) algorithm. The words with /rl/ (pearl, world) and without /rl/ (bird, word) were recorded by four English speakers and four Korean speakers, and compared pairwise. The F2-F1 trajectories, the acoustic correlate of velarized /l/, and F3 trajectories, the acoustic correlate of /r/, were examined. Formant analysis showed that English speakers lowered F2-F1 values toward the end of a word, unlike Korean speakers, suggesting the absence of /l/ in Korean speakers. In contrast, there was no significant difference in F3 values. Mixed-effects regression analyses of the DTW distances revealed that Korean speakers produced /r/ similarly to English speakers but failed to produce the velarized /l/ in /rl/ clusters.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제1권4호
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• pp.39-46
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• 2009

This study compares the perception of English high tense and lax vowels (/i, I, u, $\mho$/) by English speakers and Korean speakers of English. The four vowels were produced in /hVd/ context by a native speaker of English, and each word's vowel duration was manipulated to range from 170ms to 290ms in 30ms increments. Two English speakers and six Korean speakers of English were asked to listen to pairs of tense and lax vowel words with manipulated vowel durations and to identify the pair by choosing either heed-hid or hid-heed for front vowels and either who'd-hood or hood-who'd for back vowels. The results show that English speakers distinguished tense vowels from lax vowels with 100% accuracy regardless of the different durations, compared to 62% accuracy for Korean speakers of English. Most errors occurred for lengthened lax vowels and shortened tense vowels. The results of this study demonstrate that Korean speakers mainly rely on vowel duration as a cue to discriminate the tense and lax vowels. The theoretical and pedagogical implications of this finding are discussed.

• 음성과학
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• 제10권2호
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• pp.223-236
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• 2003

The purpose of this experimental study is to investigate characteristics of English pitch accents uttered by Korean speakers. Six English sentences were uttered five times by fifteen male undergraduate and graduate students from three groups, Seoul, Yongnam and Honam dialect speakers. We compared the subjects' data with the data of a native speaker of English as model pronunciation of English pitch accents. Acoustic features(Fo, duration, amplitude) were measured from sound spectrograms made by the PC Works. Results showed that (1) acoustic features of English pitch accents are Fo and duration for the native speaker and Korean speakers altogether, (2) Seoul dialect speakers uttered English pitch accents more similarly to the English native speaker than the other dialect speakers and (3) Korean speakers generally have difficulties in pronouncing L* accents. It appears that Korean speakers have more problems in pronouncing L* accents than H* accents.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제6권1호
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• pp.47-58
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• 2014

The purpose of this paper is to find out how Korean speakers' speech production in English word boundaries differs from English speakers' and to account for what bring about such differences. Seeing two consecutive words as one single cluster, the English speakers generally pronounce them naturally by linking a word-final consonant of the first word with a word-initial vowel of the second word, while this is not the case with most of the Korean speakers; they read the two consecutive words individually. In consequence, phonological processes such as resyllabification and aspiration can be found in the English speakers' word-boundary production, while glottalization, and unreleased stops are rather common phonological process seen in the Korean speakers' word-boundary production. This may be accounted for by Korean speakers' L1 interference, depending on English proficiency.

• 음성과학
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• 제11권3호
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• pp.193-200
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• 2004

This was a preliminary study for standardizing speech rate and fluency of normal adult Korean speakers and comparing speech rate and fluency of normal speakers with those of professional speakers. The purposes of this study were to investigate (a) the speech rates (the overall speech rate and the articulation rate) and the disfluency characteristics of normnal adult speakers and (b) the speech rates (the overall speech rate and the articulation rate) and the disfluency characteristics between normal adult speakers and professional speakers. The results were as follows: The most frequent disfluency type was 'interjection' in story-telling, 'revision' in text reading and announcing of professional speakers. The professional speakers had the fastest speech rates (overall speech rate and articulation rate) among the 3 groups.

• 음성과학
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• 제11권1호
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• pp.117-130
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• 2004

This paper investigates the English intonation of Korean speakers of English as a second language and compares it to that of English native speakers. The speech data of ten Korean speakers and three native speaker controls were tape recorded in an oral reading task in which the subjects were asked to read aloud the given text which was used in the study of Wennerstrom (1994). Following Pierrehumbert and Hirschberg (1990) who distinguishes the discrete units of meaning in intonation, pitch accents, phrase accents and boundary tones were measured. It was found that Korean speakers' use of phrase accents and boundary tones were relatively good compared to their use of pitch accents. That is, Korean speakers conform to native speakers' use of phrase or boundary tones for the purpose of marking the relationship between intermediate or intonational phrases. In contrast, the main difference of Korean speakers' use of intonation from that of native speakers was the use of pitch accents. That is, Korean speakers tend to have difficulty in assigning an appropriate pitch accent to signal relationships between new or contrastive information and that which is assumed to be understood or contributes little to the meaning of the utterance.

• 음성과학
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• 제12권2호
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• pp.7-16
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• 2005

The purpose, this experimental study was to identify pronunciation difficulties between male and female Korean speakers in their articulation of English vowels. Ten English mono-syllabic words were spoken six times by six male and six female college students. Formant frequencies were measured from sound spectrograms made by Pitch Works. Results show that Korean female speakers uttered English vowels more similar to those uttered by English native speakers than did Korean male speakers. While Korean male speakers could not readily distinguish between /i/ and /I/, /u/ and /v/, and /$\epsilon$/ and /ae/, respectively, Korean female speakers had difficulty only with /$\epsilon$/ and /ae/. The tentative results suggests that on the whole Korean speakers have difficulty in discriminating tense vowels from lax vowels, and they also have articulatory problems pronouncing low and back vowels such as /ae/. /a/ and /c/.