• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.13-26
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• 2015

Speech production studies have suggested that bilinguals who are L2-dominant are the most likely to suppress the influence of the first language (L1) on the second language (L2). The voice onset times (VOTs) and fundamental frequencies (f0s) of monolingual and bilingual speakers of English and Korean were examined to address the question whether cross language influences occur particularly in L2 predominant bilinguals and to compare their outcomes with those of L2 proficient bilinguals and monolinguals. A total of 28 speakers participated in this experiment and they produced English and Korean stops in the carrier sentence. In English, for voiceless aspirated and unaspirated stops, L2 predominant bilingual speakers produced VOTs that were significantly shorter than those of monolingual English speakers. The outcome was analogous in Korean speech. For aspirated and lax stops, they produced shorter Korean VOTs than monolingual speakers. The results of f0s were slightly different from those of VOTs. In English, L2 predominant bilinguals produced f0s that were not significantly different from those of monolingual English speakers. In Korean, however, they produced f0s that were significantly different from those of monolingual Korean speakers. Taken VOT and f0 into consideration together, the overall results suggest that, although they tend to show a corresponding pattern of monolinguals, L2 predominant bilinguals had cross language phonetic influences between L1 and L2, similar to L2 proficient bilinguals. Between the two acoustic cues, f0 seemed to be a more reliable cue than VOT to examine the influences.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.33-40
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• 2017

This study aimed to examine how Korean-English bilinguals make use of VOT and F0 cues in perception and production of Korean (lenis vs. aspirated) and English (voiced vs. voiceless) stops. It was explored whether bilinguals with extensive experience living in the U.S. exhibit native-like or interactive patterns in the cue use for both languages. Participants produced monosyllabic word-initial stops within a carrier sentence in each language, and performed forced-choice identification tasks with synthesized stimuli varying in 7 VOT steps and 7 F0 steps with base tokens of /$t^han$/ for Korean and /$t{\ae}n$/ for English. Listeners were required to select either /tan/ or /$t^han$/ for Korean and either /$d{\ae}n$/ or /$t{\ae}n$/ for English. The results from binary logistic regression analyses for each listener indicated that all bilinguals placed greater weight on F0 than VOT when distinguishing between the Korean lenis and aspirated stops, and greater weight on VOT than F0 in distinguishing between the English voiced and voiceless stops. In terms of production, all participants showed remarkably overlapping ranges in the VOT dimension and separating ranges in the F0 dimension for the stop contrast of Korean, while forming overlapping ranges in the F0 dimension and separating ranges in the VOT dimension for the stop contrast of English. These results indicate that the bilinguals with extensive exposure to L2 manage the stop systems of the two languages independently, both in perception and production, employing the opposite cue use for stops in the two languages. It was also found that the absolute beta-coefficient values of the perceptual cues for Korean stops were generally smaller than those for English and those reported in a previous study as for later bilinguals, which may have resulted from Korean not being their dominant language.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.131-135
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• 2005

Previous studies on the bilinguals' lexical selection have suggested some evidence in favor of language-specific hypothesis. The purpose of this study was to see whether Korean-English bilinguals' semantic systems of Korean and English are shared or separated between the two languages. In a series of picture-word interference tasks, participants were to name the pictures in Korean or in English with distractor words printed either in Korean or English. The distractor words were either semantically identical, related, unrelated to the picture, or nonexistant. The response time of naming was facilitated when distractor words were semantically identical for both same-(Naming pictures in English/korean with English/Korean distractor words) and different-language pairs(Naming pictures in English with Korean distractor words and vice versa). But this facilitation effect was stronger when naming was produced in their native language, which in this case was Korean. Also, inhibitory effect was shown when the picture and its distractor word were semantically related in both same- and different-language paired conditions. These results show that bilinguals'two lexicons compete to some extent when selecting the target word. In this viewpoint, it can be concluded that the lexicons of either languages may not be entirely but partly overlapping in bilinguals.

• Child Studies in Asia-Pacific Contexts
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.69-80
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• 2013

The present study examined balanced bilingual children's cognitive and affective perspective-taking and compared them to that of monolingual children. A total of 133 children aged 4 to 5 years and consisting of 73 Korean-English bilinguals and 60 Korean monolinguals were tested with cognitive perspective-taking and affective perspective-taking tasks. Balanced bilinguals were screened through general language ability tests in both English and Korean. Participant backgrounds were collected through a parent questionnaire. Results showed significant differences in affective perspective-taking between bilingual and monolingual children, demonstrating that bilingual children outperformed monolingual children. Although there was no difference in cognitive perspective-taking between bilinguals and monolinguals, the result showed that children's cognitive perspective-taking ability develops with age. This study provides basic information about bilingual children's perspective-taking ability and their bilingual advantage.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.323-355
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• 2015

This study examined grapheme-to-phoneme regularity effect among late Korean-English bilinguals by using whole word level task (lexical processing) and two meta-phonological tasks(sub-lexical processing): [1] English word naming task(whole word level), [2] rhyme judgement task(rhyme level), and [3] phoneme deletion task(phoneme level). Forty-three late Korean-English bilinguals participated in all three tasks. In these tasks, participants showed better performance in regular word conditions compared to irregular word conditions, demonstrating a clear English regularity effect. Post-hoc correlational analysis revealed strong correlation between word naming task and rhyme judgement task, which is different from the results reported with English monolinguals. The contradicting results might be due to the relevantly low English proficiency level among late Korean-English bilingual speakers. In conclusion, this study suggests that late Korean-English bilinguals make use of L2 grapheme-to-phoneme conversion (GPC) rule when reading L2 English words.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.35-46
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• 2006

This study investigated whether there are differences between Korean-English bilingual and Korean monolingual children on phonological awareness skills. Participants were 11 Korean-English bilingual children and 12 Korean monolingual children. The children's ages ranged between 6 and 7 years. The results were as follows. First, the bilingual children significantly outperformed monolingual children on overall phonological awareness tasks. The bilinguals performed significantly higher than monolinguals on all three types of phonological awareness tasks (segmentation, deletion, and blending). Second, there was a significant difference between the groups with respect to phonological units of the tasks. The bilinguals performed significantly better than monolinguals on the phonemic unit tasks, but two groups did not differ significantly on syllabic unit tasks. There was an interaction effect between unit size(syllables and phonemes) and group (bilinguals and monolinguals). Third, there were correlations for both bilingual and monolingual children between overall phonological awareness skills and word recognition skills.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.180-182
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• 2007

The present study was carried out to investigate how two languages are represented and processed for the late Korean-English bilinguals. To this end, we compared the naming times of Korean-English bilinguals on a series of the picture-word interference tasks. The entire experiment is divided into four parts, each of which required participants to name the pictures in Korean or in English with distractor words visually presented either in Korean or English. The distractor words were semantically related or unrelated to the picture. The results showed that, in different language conditions (L1 naming-L2 distractor, L2 naming - L1 distractor), there was only numerical difference between semantic related and unrelated condition. In same language conditions (L1 naming-L1 distractor, L2 naming-L2 distractor), however, significant semantic interference effect occurred. And, the interference effect was stronger in the L1 distractor condition than in the L2 distractor condition. These results suggest that the semantic processing of L1 and L2 for the late bilinguals are independent each other.

• MALSORI
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• no.57
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• pp.59-72
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• 2006

The purpose of this study was to see whether Korean-English bilinguals' semantic systems of Korean and English are shared or separated between the two languages. In a series of picture-word interference tasks, participants were required to name the pictures in Korean or in English with distractor words printed either in Korean or English. The distractor words were any of identical, semantically related, or neutral to the picture. The response time of naming was facilitated when distractor words were semantically identical for both same- and different-language pairs. But this facilitation effect was stronger when naming was produced in their native language, which in this case was Korean. Also, inhibitory effect was found when the picture and its distractor word were semantically related in both same- and different-language paired conditions. From these results it can be concluded that semantic representations of Korean and English may not be entirely but partly overlapping in bilinguals.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.1-7
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• 2019

Korean (L1)-English (L2) bilingual adults' and children's production of Korean and English stops was examined to determine the age effects and L2 experience on the development of L1 and L2 stop contrasts. Four groups of Seoul Korean speakers (experienced and inexperienced adult and child groups) and two groups of age-matched native English speakers participated. The overall results of voice onset time (VOT) and fundamental frequency (F0) of phrase-initial stops in Korean and word-intial stops in English showed a delay in the acquisition of L1 due to the dominant exposure to L2. Significantly longer VOT and lower F0 for aspirated stops as well as high temporal variability across repetitions of lenis stops were interpreted to indicate a strong effect of English on Korean stop contrasts for bilingual children. That is, the heavy use of VOT for Korean stop contrasts shows bilingual children's attention to the acoustic cue that are primarily employed in the dominant L2. Furthermore, inexperienced children, but not adults, were shown to create new L2 categories that are distinctive from the L1 within 6 months of L2 experience, suggesting greater independence between the two phonological systems. The implications of bilinguals' age at the time of testing to the degree and direction of L1-L2 interaction are further discussed.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.59-68
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• 2010

This study addresses the issue of whether Korean(L1)-English(L2) non-proficient bilinguals are affected by the native coda-neutralization process when recognizing words in English continuous speech. Korean phonological rules require that if liaison occurs between 'words', then coda-neutralization process must come before the liaison process, which results in liaison-consonants being coda-neutralized ones such as /b/, /d/, or /g/, rather than non-neutralized ones like /p/, /t/, /k/, /$t{\int}$/, /$d_{\Im}$/, or /s/. Consequently, if Korean listeners apply their native coda-neutralization rules to English speech input, word detection will be easier when coda-neutralized consonants precede target words than when non-neutralized ones do. Word-spotting and word-monitoring tasks were used in Experiment 1 and 2, respectively. In both experiments, listeners detected words faster and more accurately when vowel-initial target words were preceded by coda-neutralized consonants than when preceded by coda non-neutralized ones. The results show that Korean listeners exploit their native phonological process when processing English, irrespective of whether the native process is appropriate or not.