• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.31-41
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• 2012

Recent studies have shown that the stop system of Korean is undergoing a sound change in terms of the two acoustic parameters, voice onset time (VOT) and fundamental frequency (f0). Because of a VOT merger of a consonantal opposition and onset-f0 interaction, the relative importance of the two parameters has been changing in Korean where f0 is a primary cue and VOT is a secondary cue in distinguishing lax from aspirated stops in speech production as well as perception. In English, however, VOT is a primary cue and f0 is a secondary cue in contrasting voiced and voiceless stops. This study examines how Korean English learners use the two acoustic parameters of L1 in producing L2 English stops and whether the sound change of acoustic parameters in L1 affects L2 speech production. The data were collected from six adult Korean English learners. Results show that Korean English learners use not only VOT but also f0 to contrast L2 voiced and voiceless stops. However, unlike VOT variations among speakers, the magnitude effect of onset consonants on f0 in L2 English was steady and robust, indicating that f0 also plays an important role in contrasting the [voice] contrast in L2 English. The results suggest that the important role of f0 in contrasting lax and aspirated stops in L1 Korean is transferred to the contrast of voiced and voiceless stops in L2 English. The results imply that, for Korean English learners, f0 rather than VOT will play an important perceptual cue in contrasting voiced and voiceless stops in L2 English.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.9-17
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• 2021

Voice onset time (VOT) is known to be a primary acoustic cue that differentiates voiced from voiceless stops in the world's languages. While much attention has been given to the sound change of Korean stops, little attention has been given to that of English stops. This study examines VOT of stop consonants as produced by English speakers in comparison to Korean speakers to see whether there is any VOT change for English stops and how the effects of stop, place, gender, and individual on VOT differ cross-linguistically. A total of 24 native speakers (11 Americans and 13 Koreans) participated in this experiment. The results showed that, for Korean, the VOT merger of lax and aspirated stops was replicated, and, for English, voiced stops became initially devoiced and voiceless stops became heavily aspirated. English voiceless stops became longer in VOT than Korean counterparts. The results suggest that, similar to Korean stops, English stops may also undergo a sound change. Since it is the first study to be revealed, more convincing evidence is necessary.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.31-38
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• 2013

This study investigated the influence of English vowel pronunciation training to English word-initial stop pronunciation. For that purpose, VOT values of English stops produced by twenty Korean English learners(five Youngnam dialect male speakers, five Youngnam dialect female speakers, five Kangwon dialect male speakers, and five Kangwon dialect female speakers) were measured using the Speech Analyzer and their post-training production was compared with their pre-training production. The result shows that post-training VOT values of voiced stops became closer to those of native English speakers in all four groups. Hence, it can be inferred that vowel pronunciation training is effective for correcting pronunciation of voiced vowels by analyzing the change of the quality of following vowels(especially low vowels) and the degree of giving stress.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.57-63
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• 2009

The two specific research questions pursued in this paper are: (i) how Korean speakers perceive Hindi stops in terms of the three laryngeal categories of Korean stops; (ii) how well Korean speakers do with an ABX perception test that utilizes a total of 52 Hindi minimal pairs where all sounds are identical except for the laryngeal features of a stop in each word. A total of 45 university students participated in this experiment. The results showed that (i) Koreans tended to perceive Hindi voiceless unaspirated stops as Korean fortis ones, voiceless aspirated stops as aspirated ones, voiced stops as lenis ones, and breathy stops as aspirated ones, and (ii) Koreans had difficulty in distinguishing between voiceless aspirated and breathy stops in Hindi.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.39
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• pp.381-406
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• 2015

Russian nasal consonants / m /, / n / have a feature value not only [+consonant] in common with obstruents, but also [+sonorant] in common with vowels. Nasal / m /(bi-labial) and / n /(dental) have the same place of articulation but different manner of articulation. The feature value of / m / is [+cons, +son, +nas, +ant, -cor, -high, -low, -back, -cont, -del, rel, -strid, +voic], and that of / n / is [+cons, +son, +nas, +ant, +cor, -high, -low, -back, -cont, -del, rel, -strid, + voic]. There is a difference in feature [cor] value of / m / and / n /. In this study it is confirmed that it is a fact that the Russian nasal consonants behave differently from the other consonants in each phonological phenomenon due to their phonological characteristics. The preceding voiced obstruent is changed to an unvoiced one in a process where the last voiceless obstruent in the consonant cluster ' voiced obstruent + nasal /m/ + voiceless obstruent' skips the nasal consonant and spreads its feature value to the preceding voiced obstruent transparently because of the feature [+sonorant] of the nasal consonant. The coronal nasal /n/ participates in a palatalization with the following palatal actively and palatalize preceding plain consonants passively because of markedness hierarchy such as 'Velar > Labial > Coronal'. But the labial nasal /m/ is palatalized with the following velar palatal actively and participates in a palatalization with the following coronal palatal passively. This result helps us confirm the phonological difference of /m/ and /n/ in a palatalization. When the a final consonant is nasal, the unvoicing phenomenon of a final consonant doesn't occur. In such a case as cluster 'obstruent + nasal' the feature value [voiced] of the preceding obstruent doesn't change, but the following nasal can assimilate into the preceding obstruent. When continuing the same nasals / -nn- / in a consonant cluster, the feature value [+cont] of a weak position leads the preceding nasal / n / to be changed into [-cont] / l /. Through the analysis of the frequency of occurrences of consonants in syllabic onsets and codas that should observe the 'Sonority Sequence Principle', the sonority hierarchy of nasal consonants has been confirmed. In a diachronic perspective following nasal / m /, / n / there is a loss of the preceding labial stop and dental stop. But in clusters with the velar stop+nasal, the two-component cluster has been kept phonetically intact.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.89-95
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• 2015

We explored Dutch listeners' perception of Korean three-way contrast of fortis, lenis, and aspirated stops. The three Korean stops are all voiceless word-initially, whereas Dutch distinguishes between voiced and voiceless stops, so Korean voiceless stops were expected to be difficult for the Dutch listeners. Among the three Korean stops, fortis stops are phonetically most similar to Dutch voiceless stops, thus they were expected to be the easiest to distinguish for the Dutch listeners. Dutch and Korean listeners carried out a discrimination task using three crucial comparisons, i.e., fortis-lenis, fortis-aspirated, and lenis-aspirated stops. Results showed that discrimination between lenis and aspirated stops was the most difficult among the three comparisons for both Dutch and Korean listeners. As expected, Dutch listeners discriminated fortis from the other stops relatively accurately. It seems likely that Dutch listeners relied heavily on VOT but less on F0 when discriminating between the three Korean stops.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.65-72
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• 2004

The force of articulation is different between voiced and voiceless consonants in the binary opposition system. However, the Korean voiceless stop consonants have a triple opposition system: lenis, aspirated, and glottalized. The aim of this study is to find the primary distinctive feature between the force of articulation and the aspiration for the three different types of Korean stops. Two native speakers of the Seoul dialect participated to this study. The corpus was composed of less than eight syllabic words containing consonants in word-initial position and intervocalic position. Radiocinematography and Mingography were used to analyze the articulatory tension and acoustic characteristics. Korean stops have independent features of articulatory tension and aspiration, in which the indices are different according to position. However, in this system which does not have the opposition of sonority, the force of articulation is the primary distinctive feature and the feature of aspiration is subsidiary.

• 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.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.53-64
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• 2021

It is known that the voicing contrast for Japanese word-initial stops is primarily realized as differences in the voice onset time (VOT). However, recent studies have reported that voiced stops are more often produced with a positive VOT than with a negative VOT among the younger generation nationwide. It is also known that post-stop F0 is associated with the stop contrast, but the degree of F0 use differs from region to region. This study explores whether the difference in post-stop F0 functions as a perceptual cue to the stop contrast along with VOT. Fifty-five college students who are native listeners from four different regions participated in two or three perception tests. The results show that VOT is a primary cue to the voiced-voiceless distinction of word-initial stops, but that the effect of post-stop F0 on the stop contrast is marginal. The post-stop F0 is involved in perception only when VOT is ambiguous, such that a sound with high F0 is more often perceived as a voiceless stop, but not vice versa. The results of this study indicate that the acoustic parameters associated with the stop contrast are not the same in production and perception, and suggest that other factors such as context, which is not an acoustic characteristic, may also be involved in the stop contrast.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2000.07a
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• pp.365-365
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• 2000

English segments adopted into Korean can be divided into three types: Some English segments /$m, {\;}n, {\;}{\eta}, {\;}p^h, {\;}t^h, {\;}k^h$/ are adopted into the original sound [$m, {\;}n, {\;}{\eta}, {\;}p^h, {\;}t^h, {\;}k^h$] in Korean. Other segments /b, d, g/ appear in the voiceless stop form [p, t, k]. Generative Phonology explains the presence of the above English segments in Korean but it cannot explain why the English segments /$f, {\;}v, {\;}{\Theta}, {\;}{\breve{z}}, {\;}{\breve{c}}, {\;}{\breve{j}}$/ disappear during the adopting process. I present a set of universal constraints from the Optimality Theory proposed by Prince and Smolensky(l993) and I show how English segments differently adopted into Korean can be explained by these universal constraints such as Faith(feature). N oAffricateStop, Faith(nasal), NoNasalStop, Faith(voice), NoVoicedStop and the interaction of these constraints. I conclude that this Optimality Theory provides insights that better capture the nature of the phonological phenomena of English segments in Korean.