• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.240-242
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• 2007

The goal of this paper is to investigate effects of three prosodic factors, such as phrasal accent (accented vs. unaccented), prosodic boundary (IP-initial vs. IP-medial) and coda voicing (e.g., bed vs. bet), on acoustic realization of English vowels (/i, $_I/$, $/{\varepsilon}$, ${\ae}/$) as produced by native (Canadian) and nonnative (Korean) speakers. The speech corpus included 16 minimal pairs (e.g., bet-bat, bet-bed) embedded in a sentence. Results show that phonological contrast between vowels are maximized when they were accented, though the contrast maximization pattern was not the same between the English and Korean speakers. However, domain-initial position do not affect the phonetic manifestation of vowels. Results also show that phonological contrast due to coda voicing is maximized only when the vowels are accented. These results propose that the phonetic realization of vowels is affected by phrasal accent only, and not by the location within prosodic position.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.39-45
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• 2014

This study investigates twenty four Korean females' production of English front vowels focusing on the distinction in /i/ vs /ɪ/ and /ɛ/ vs /${\ae}$/ and formant values of stressed and unstressed vowels compared with those of native English speakers. The Korean learners were asked to read a textbook passage which includes ten sentences including target vowels. The major results indicate that: (1) Korean learners have trouble producing a distinct version (tense and lax) of front vowels in the paragraph reading; (2) The vowel space of the stressed vowels in a paragraph is smaller than that of embedded sentences; and (3) The vowel quality of the unstressed vowels produced by the Korean learners is similar to that of the native English speakers. The findings from this study can be applied to the pronunciation teaching for the Korean learners of English vowels and realization of English stress.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.17-20
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• 2005

The purpose of this project is to develop a device that can automatically measure pronunciation of English speech produced by Korean learners of English. Pronunciation proficiency will be measured largely in two areas; suprasegmental and segmental areas. In suprasegmental area, intonation and word stress will be traced and compared with those of native speakers by way of statistical methods using tilt parameters. Durations of phones are also examined to measure speakers' naturalness of their pronunciations. In doing so, statistical duration modelling from a large speech database using CART will be considered. For segmental measurement of pronunciation, acoustic probability of a phone, which is a byproduct when doing the forced alignment, will be a basis of scoring pronunciation accuracy of a phone. The final score will be a feedback to the learners to improve their pronunciation.

• MALSORI
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• no.60
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• pp.47-66
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• 2006

This study examined the effect of English-language experience on Korean- and Japanese-English late learners' production of English unstressed vowels in terms of four acoustic phonetic features: F0, duration, intensity and vowel reduction. The learners manifested some improvement with experience. The native-like attainment of a phonetic feature, however, was related to the phonological status of that feature in the speakers' native language. The results suggest that the extent to which the non-native speakers' production of English unstressed vowels improved with English-language experience varied as a function of their native language background.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.75-87
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• 2005

In this study I investigate how native Korean listeners perceive English vowels /i/, /I/, and /$\epsilon$/. I extend Flege et al's (1997) study with synthesized /i/-/I/ and /I/-/$\epsilon$/ continua, and apply the results to Flege's (1995) Speech Learning Model (SLM). The statistical results show that native speakers of English rely more on spectral steps than on vowel duration when they identify the /i/-/I/ continuum, whereas native speakers of Korean rely more on vowel duration than on spectral steps when they identify the same continuum. In the case of the /I/-/$\epsilon$/ continuum, both groups rely on spectral steps when they identify the /$\epsilon$/, which supports the SLM; Koreans identified the /$\epsilon$/ categorically since Korean has the equivalent vowel. However, there was not statistical difference between Korean subjects with more English experience (KE) and those with less English experience in the identification of both continua. This contradicts the SLM, which posits that experienced L2 learners are better than inexperienced L2 learners in perception of L2 sounds. The exact nature of this should be further investigated in the SLM.

• 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.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.9-14
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• 2018

This study compared the relative contributions of intensity, F0, duration and vowel spectra of L2 English lexical stress by Japanese and Korean learners of English. Recordings of Japanese, Korean and native English speakers reading eighteen 2 to 4 syllable words in a carrier sentence were analyzed using multiple regression to investigate the influence of each acoustic correlate in determining whether a vowel was stressed. The relative contribution of each correlate was calculated by converting the coefficients to percentages. The Japanese learner group showed phonological transfer of L1 phonology to L2 lexical prosody and relied mostly on F0 and duration in manifesting L2 English stress. This is consistent with the results of the previous studies. However, advanced Japanese speakers in the group showed less reliance on F0, and more use of intensity, which is another parameter used in native English stress accents. On the other hand, there was little influence of F0 on L2 English stress by the Korean learners, probably due to the transfer of the Korean intonation pattern to L2 English prosody. Hence, this study shows that L1 transfer happens at the prosodic level for Japanese learners of English and at the intonational level for Korean learners.

• MALSORI
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• no.38
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• pp.41-70
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• 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.

• Journal of the Korean BIBLIA Society for library and Information Science
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.479-496
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• 2012

English is an important tool of information literacy in terms of global information sharing environment. This impacts readers advisory services of public libraries in many ways. In order to identify status of English reading programs in public libraries, this paper investigated 50 public librarries' services for non-English speakers in California, which has long history serving readers advisory services to them. As a result, it is suggested that public libraries have to play a key role to help adult users to be competent in English with English reading programs. Public libraries also need to support families to build English reading environment at home to expand reading activities in libraries. In addition, reading habit in mother tongue is also important for English reading ability, so public libraries consider to build a bridge between them to provide effective English reading programs.

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