• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.27-36
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• 2014

This study provided longitudinal examination of the Chinese learners' acquisition of Korean vowels. Specifically, I examined the Chinese learners' Korean monophthongs /i, e, ɨ, ${\Lambda}$, a, u, o/ that were created at the time of 1 month and 12 months, tried to verify empirically how they learn by dealing with their mother tongue, and Korean vowels through dealing with pattern of the Perceptual Assimilation Model (henceforth PAM) of Best (Best, 1993; 1994; Best & Tyler, 2007) and the Speech Learning Model (henceforth SLM) of Flege (Flege, 1987; Bohn & Flege, 1992, Flege, 1995). As a result, most of the present results are shown to be similarly explained by the PAM and SLM, and the only discrepancy between these two models is found in the 'similar' category of sounds between the learners' native language and the target language. Specifically, the acquisition pattern of /u/ and /o/ in Korean is well accounted for the PAM, but not in the SLM. The SLM did not explain why the Chinese learners had difficulty in acquiring the Korean vowel /u/, because according to the SLM, the vowel /u/ in Chinese (the native language) is matched either to the vowel /u/ or /o/ in Korean (the target language). Namely, there is only a one-to-one matching relationship between the native language and the target language. In contrast, the Chinese learners' difficulty for the Korean vowel /u/ is well accounted for in the PAM in that the Chinese vowel /u/ is matched to the vowel pair /o, u/ in Korean, not the single vowel, /o/ or /u/.