• Title/Summary/Keyword: Native American

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Acquisition of prosodic phrasing and edge tones by Korean learners of English

  • Choe, Wook Kyung
    • Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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    • v.8 no.4
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    • pp.31-38
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    • 2016
  • The purpose of the current study was to examine the acquisition of the second language prosody by Korean learners of English. Specifically, this study investigated Korean learners' patterns of prosodic phrasing and their use of edge tones (i.e., phrase accents and boundary tones) in English, and then compared the patterns with those of native English speakers. Eight Korean learners and 8 native speakers of English read 5 different English passages. Both groups' patterns of tones and prosodic phrasing were analyzed using the Mainstream American English Tones and Break Indices (MAE_ToBI) transcription conventions. The results indicated that the Korean learners chunked their speech into prosodic phrases more frequently than the native speakers did. This frequent prosodic phrasing pattern was especially noticeable in sentence-internal prosodic phrases, often where there was no punctuation mark. Tonal analyses revealed that the Korean learners put significantly more High phrase accents (H-) on their sentence-internal intermediate phrase boundaries than the native speakers of English. In addition, compared with the native speakers, the Korean learners used significantly more High boundary tones (both H-H% and L-H%) for the sentence-internal intonational phrases, while they used similar proportion of High boundary tones for the sentence-final intonational phrases. Overall, the results suggested that Korean learners of English successfully acquired the meanings and functions of prosodic phrasing and edge tones in English as well as that they are able to efficiently use these prosodic features to convey their own discourse intention.

PRAAT Software: A Spech Interaction Tool to Analyze Teacher Voices (PRAAT 소프트웨어: 교사 목소리 분석을 위한 맞춤법 상호작용 도구)

  • Kidd, Ella Jane
    • Journal of Convergence for Information Technology
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    • v.9 no.9
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    • pp.158-165
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    • 2019
  • Through the use of speech software technology, this paper examines the effects of voice interactions within the inner circle of English. The fundamental frequency (F0) was obtained by analyzing native speakers (aged 30-55) speech effects based on nationality, age, and gender. The findings within this study reveal that the Caucasian British female (age 33) and the Caucasian American male (age 55) produced the most interactive speech. The contributing factor is the students' experience with various language styles throughout their language acquisition studies. The results of this study are compatible with $Traunm{\ddot{u}}eller$ & Eriksson (1995) and previous studies which agree that continuous speech above average is paramount towards student engagement and interactions.

An Acoustical Study of English Diphthongs Produced by American Males and Females (미국인 남성과 여성이 발음한 영어이중모음의 음향적 연구)

  • Yang, Byung-Gon
    • Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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    • v.2 no.2
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    • pp.43-50
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    • 2010
  • English vowels can be divided into monophthongs and diphthongs depending on the number of vocal tract shapes. Diphthongs are usually produced with more than one shape. This study attempts to collect acoustical data of English diphthongs published by Hillenbrand et al.(1995) online and to examine acoustic features of the diphthongs for phoneticians and English teachers. Sixty three American males and females were chosen after excluding those subjects with different target vowels or ambiguous formant tracks. The author used Praat to obtain the acoustical data systematically at eleven equidistant timepoints over the diphthongal segment. Obvious errors were corrected based on the spectrographic display of each diphthong. Results show that the formant trajectories of the diphthongs produced by the American males and females appeared quite similar. When the female formant values were uniformly normalized to those of the males, almost a perfect collapse occurred. Secondly, the diphthongal movements on the vowel space appeared not linear due to the coarticulatory gesture for the following consonant. Thirdly, the average duration of the diphthongs produced by the females was 1.156 times longer than that of the males while the pitch ratio between the two groups turned out to be 1.746 with a similar contour over measurement points. The author concludes that English diphthongs produced by various groups can be compared systematically when the acoustical values are obtained at proportional timepoints. Further studies will be desirable on the comparison of English diphthongs produced by native and nonnative speakers.

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The impact of language-learning environments on Korean learners' English vowel production

  • Lee, Shinsook;Nam, Hosung;Kang, Jaekoo;Shin, Dong-Jin;Kim, Young Shin
    • Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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    • v.9 no.2
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    • pp.69-76
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    • 2017
  • The current study investigated whether Korean learners' English-learning environments, especially target English accent (General American English (GAE) vs. Southern British English (SBE)) and English-language experience affected their production of English vowels. Thirty six EFL learners, 27 ESL-US learners, and 33 ESL-UK learners produced 8 English vowels with a bVt frame (beat, bit, bet, bat, bought, bot, boat, boot). The learners' productions were acoustically analyzed in terms of F1 and F2 frequencies. The overall results revealed that the learners' target accent had an effect on their production of some English vowels. The EFL and ESL-US learners' (especially, female learners') production of bought, bot, boat, and boot, which show characteristic differences between the GAE and SBE accents, was closer to that of the native American English (AE) speakers than the native British English (BE) speakers. In contrast, the ESL-UK learners' production of bought and bot demonstrated the opposite pattern. Thus, the impact of target accent was not demonstrated across the board. The effect of the learners' different English-language experience was also rather limited. This was because the EFL learners' production was not much different from the ESL-US learners' production, in spite of the ESL-US learners' residence in the US for more than 9 years. Furthermore, the Korean learners, irrespective of their different English-language experience, tended to produce bit and bat with lower F1 than the native AE and BE speakers, thus resulting in bit and bat to be produced similarly to beat and bet, respectively. This demonstrates the learners' persistent L1 effects on their English vowel production despite the learners' residence in the English speaking countries or their high English proficiency.

The Identity of Contemporary Native Americans Represented by Various Stories of Leslie Marmon Silko (실코의 다양한 이야기들을 통해서 재현되는 현대 미국 원주민의 정체성)

  • Jung, Sunkug
    • Journal of English Language & Literature
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    • v.56 no.5
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    • pp.823-850
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    • 2010
  • In this paper, I will explore disparate voices embedded in the interactions of stories in which personal, cultural, historical, and mythical consciousness brings up diverse ideas about the experiences of Native Americans. The accommodation of differences and changes is clearly manifested through the healing ceremony of Tayo, which poses some practical questions: what could be the authentic tradition of Native Americans?; which direction should it be led to? As these questions suggest, Tayo needs to think over and work through the way that Native oral stories will enrich the signification of being Indian within multicultural U. S. society. In other words, Tayo should transfer the oppositional relationship between Anglo and Native American world into an interactive one to bring forth new meanings concerning their interactions. As a hybrid, Tayo begins to recognize that his fragmented consciousness could represent the pervasive but surmountable anxiety about the cultural clash between Native and White Americans. Going through the multiple layers of his stories, Tayo learns that Native Americans need to hold a balanced viewpoint firmly: this demonstrates that storytelling brings restoration and renewal to him. As a result of Betonie's healing ceremony and his intimate relationship with Ts'eh, Tayo comes to have a holistic comprehension about how all the living things are interconnected to one another. After acquiring this recognition, Tayo succeeds in his quest to get back Josiah's cattle and recovers his identity as a Laguna Pueblo Indian, still letting diverse voices, cultures, and stories flow into the process of storytelling. As the last scene in which the conversations among Tayo, Auntie, and Grandmother took place illustrates, Tayo has newly secured a position that will require him to create a new, alternative story, not just repeating previous stories.

Modernity and Regionalism of American Art Deco Architecture - Focused on Miami Beach - (미국 아르데코 건축의 근대성과 지역주의 - 마이애미 해변을 중심으로 -)

  • Park, Kyoung-Im
    • Korean Institute of Interior Design Journal
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    • v.20 no.5
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    • pp.125-134
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    • 2011
  • Art Deco is a decorative and eclectic design style, popularized at the interwar period. The term Art Deco derives from the Exposition Internationale des Arts D$\acute{e}$coratils et Industriels Modernes held in Paris in 1925. The aim of the exposition was to create new modern aesthetics. This exposition introduced the modern decorative and industrial art to the world and influenced all designers of area, including architects, interior designers, industrial designers, craftsmen, fashion designers, etc. Art Deco designers applied inspirations from a variety of sources and movements such as the Cubist abstract, the Neoclassical refinement, Egyptian exotic elements, Babylonian and Aztec temples, the machine aesthetic, avant-garde movements, etc to their modern works. Art Deco style rapidly spread all over the design areas nationwide in America. In Art Deco architecture, in particular, its inception was French but its domination was American. Skyscrapers, airplanes, automobiles, ocean liners, jazz, Hollywood film, streamline, and native Indian symbols are the defining features of American Art Deco. This study began from questions on how these features are expressed and stylized to decoration elements as the modern aesthetics in American Art Deco architecture. Thus, the purpose of the study is to find out the ornamental and eclectic factors of Art Deco style and to define a concept of the modernity and the regionalism of Art Deco architecture in America. This article provides an overview of the decoration style of Art Deco architecture in America through the analysis of ornamental and eclectic factors reflecting diverse roots. It also analyzes the wide variety of building examples of American Art Deco which represent regionalism. In addition, this study focuses on Art Deco architecture in Miami, Florida. Miami is one of typical cities that has the most unique regional aspects of 1920's to 1940's in Art Deco architecture. Miami Art Deco architecture reveals the tropical and nautical references such as streamlined and curved walls, exotic animal motifs, flora and fauna motifs, and marine motifs: use of glass block, porthole window, terra-cotta, and pastel color stucco.

Difference in Requests between Koreans and Americans

  • Park, Chung-Yeol
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.12 no.2
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    • pp.153-176
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    • 2006
  • This paper examines "Difference in Requests." The study of speech acts is a crucial area in sociolinguistics and ethnolinguistics, and has aided in the development of TESOL. It also provides a useful means of relating linguistic form and communicative intent. This paper concentrated on 3 request strategies, which were requests made with an explanation, requests made without an explanation and no requests. The purpose of this study, and of concern in TESOL, was to discover whether Koreans framed their requests differently under different conditions. Based on these differences, I wanted to ascertain whether Koreans who spoke English as a second language, and who have lived in the United States, frame their requests as they would in their native tongues thus creating the potential for sociolinguistic failure, or use American sociolinguistic style. As the results of the study, it was found that in the majority of cases, Americans made an explanation with a request. In many cases the Koreans living in Korea would not give an explanation when making a request. Rather, they were direct in request. In many cases the Korean speaking English and living in the US had adopted the American request strategy of giving an explanation.

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Teaching English Overseas: From EFL Instructors' Perspectives

  • Kim, Young-Sang
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.10 no.3
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    • pp.67-88
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    • 2004
  • Given the noteworthy increase in the number of native-born English-speaking. EFL instructors teaching overseas, this research examined 6 American EFL instructors who had taught English abroad with special reference to their experience as foreigner instructors in their respective host countries. With the use of interviews as the major technique employed, this research was centered on identifying conflicts or difficulties the research participants encountered as novice instructors, both internal and external to the classroom settings of their host countries. Research findings revealed that the current participants were not adequately prepared to cope with new and unfamiliar physical settings of their host countries, or to familiarize themselves with their new classroom settings and students. Studying the various the conflicts which native EFL instructors encountered, both internal and external to the classroom environment, will hopefully shed light on, and provide a more accurate portrayal of EFL professionals' teaching overseas and may provide possible insights into potential solutions to them. Furthermore, the research findings were considered and discussed in terms of acculturation theory.

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Why do Korean and Cantonese use a Non-rhotic Accent in English Loanword Adaptation\ulcorner

  • Rhee, Sang-Jik
    • MALSORI
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    • no.42
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    • pp.1-13
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    • 2001
  • This paper deals with non-rhoticity of Korean and Cantonese in English loanword adaptation. These two languages have quite different cultural and historical backgrounds with respect to English. The influence of the American accent prevails in Korea while in Cantonese the influence is British. However, the treatment of coda-/r/ from English illustrates that both languages are the same in that they use a non-rhotic accent. The main point of this paper is to show that the non-rhoticity of these two languages must be accounted for by their native phonological systems rather than extralinguistic factors such as historical. social and / or cultural backgrounds.

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