• Journal of Korean language education
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.155-180
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to acoustically analyze eight Korean monophthongs produced by 29 Taiwanese learners of Korean and 20 native speakers of Korean, and to compare their pronunciations in experimental phonetics. Using the first formants(F1) and the second formants(F2) of Korean monophthongs, we can estimate the tongue positions of vowels produced by participants. In order to compare them directly, we had to normalize participants' F1 and F2. The result shows that almost all vowels of the Taiwanese learners are significantly different from those of Korean native speakers in their F1 and F2 values without the /ㅏ/ vowel. In particular, when pronouncing Korean monophthongs, the Korean learners of Taiwan had a narrow area of the place of articulation compared to the Korean native speakers except for back vowels. Finally, it shows that the Korean learners in Taiwan had a narrower range of articulation and articulated the vowels towards the back a little comparing to the Korean native speakers.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 1996.10a
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• pp.574-575
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• 1996

The theme of the current study is to study intonation of Taiwanese(Tw.) by comparing the intonation patterns in native language (Ll), target language (L2), and interlanguage (IL). Studies on interlanguage have dealt primarily with segments. Though there were studies which addressed to the issues of interlanguage intonation, more often than not, they didn't offer evidence for the statement, and the hypotheses were mainly based on impression. Therefore, a formal description of interlanguage intonation is necessary for further development in this field. The basic assumption of this study is that native speakers of one language perceive and produce a second language in ways closely related to the patterns of their first language. Several studies on interlanguage prosody have suggested that prosodic structure and rules are more subject to transfer than certain other phonological phenomena, given their abstract structural nature and generality(Vogel 1991). Broselow(1988) also shows that interlanguage may provide evidence for particular analyses of the native language grammar, which may not be available from the study of the native language alone. Several research questions will be addressed in the current study: A. How does duration vary among native and nominative utterances\ulcorner The results shows that there is a significant difference in duration between the beginning English learners, and the native speakers of American English for all the eleven English sentences. The mean duration shows that the beginning English learners take almost twice as much time (1.70sec.), as Americans (O.97sec.) to produce English sentences. The results also show that American speakers take significant longer time to speak all ten Taiwanese utterances. The mean duration shows that Americans take almost twice as much time (2.24sec.) as adult Taiwanese (1.14sec.) to produce Taiwanese sentences. B. Does proficiency level influence the performance of interlanguage intonation\ulcorner Can native intonation patterns be achieved by a non-native speaker\ulcorner Wenk(1986) considers proficiency level might be a variable which related to the extent of Ll influence. His study showed that beginners do transfer rhythmic features of the Ll and advanced learners can and do succeed in overcoming mother-tongue influence. The current study shows that proficiency level does play a role in the acquisition of English intonation by Taiwanese speakers. The duration and pitch range of the advanced learners are much closer to those of the native American English speakers than the beginners, but even advanced learners still cannot achieve native-like intonation patterns. C. Do Taiwanese have a narrower pitch range in comparison with American English speakers\ulcorner Ross et. al.(1986) suggests that the presence of tone in a language significantly inhibits the unrestricted manipulation of three acoustical measures of prosody which are involved in producing local pitch changes in the fundamental frequency contour during affective signaling. Will the presence of tone in a language inhibit the ability of speakers to modulate intonation\ulcorner The results do show that Taiwanese have a narrower pitch range in comparison with American English speakers. Both advanced (84Hz) and beginning learners (58Hz) of English show a significant narrower FO range than that of Americans' (112Hz), and the difference is greater between the beginning learners' group and native American English speakers.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.15-22
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• 2018

Stressed vowels in English are usually produced using longer duration, higher pitch, and greater intensity than unstressed vowels. However, many English as a foreign language (EFL) learners have difficulty producing English lexical stress because their mother tongues do not have such features. In order to investigate if certain non-native English speakers (Korean, Japanese, and Taiwanese-Chinese native speakers) are able to produce English lexical stress in a native-like manner, speech samples were extracted from the L2 learners' corpus known as AESOP (the Asian English Speech cOrpus Project). Sixteen disyllabic words were analyzed in terms of the ratio of duration, pitch, and intensity. The results demonstrate that non-native English speakers are able to produce English stress in a similar way to native English speakers, and all speakers (both native and non-native) show a tendency to use duration as the strongest cue in producing stress. The results also show that the duration ratio of native English speakers was significantly higher than that of non-native speakers, indicating that native speakers produce a bigger difference in duration between stressed and unstressed vowels.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Language and Information Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.173-181
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• 2007

This is a semantic pilot study which concentrates on how people in Taiwan process the temporal metaphors, ego-moving metaphor and time-moving metaphor. Motivated by the research of Gentner, Imai, and Boroditsky (2002) in which the English native speakers comprehend ego-moving metaphors faster than time-moving metaphors, the present study attempts to reexamine whether the faster reaction to ego-moving metaphors is shared by both the Chinese native speakers and EFL learners. To achieve the goals, 25 Chinese/English bilinguals are invited to be examined via the16 Chinese and 16 English test sentences. The recordings of their accuracy on each item are served as the databases used to compare with the study of Gentner, Imai, and Boroditsky (2002). The two finding presented here are: (1) when the subjects tested in their native language, Chinese, they process ego-moving metaphors better. (2) when tested in the foreign language, English, they conceptualize time-moving metaphors much better.