• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.111-121
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• 2015

The present study examines the auditory boundary between Korean /o/ and /u/ on a synthesized vowel continuum by Chinese learners of Korean language. Preceding researches reported that the Chinese learners have difficulty pronouncing Korean monophthongs /o/ and /u/. In this experiment, a nine-step continuum was resynthesized using Praat from a vowel token from a recording of a male announcer who produced it in isolated form. F1 and F2 were synchronously shifted in equal steps in qtone (quarter tone), while F3 and F4 values were held constant for the entire stimuli. A forced choice identification task was performed by the advanced learners who speak Mandarin Chinese as their native language. Their experiment data were compared to a Korean native group. ROC (Receiver Operating Characteristic) analysis and logistic regression were performed to estimate the perceptual boundary. The result indicated the learner group has a different auditory criterion on the continuum from the Korean native group. This suggests that more importance should be placed on hearing and listening training in order to acquire the phoneme categories of the two vowels.