• 음성과학
• /
• 제10권4호
• /
• pp.81-91
• /
• 2003

The aim of this study was to estimate the target F2 values of the coronal plain stop in Korean and the degree of deviation from the target in the context of various vowels, and to compare the results of Korean regarding the coronal stop with those of English and French. An acoustic analysis showed that the mean F2 value of the Korean coronal stop produced by 10 male speakers was 1,855 Hz and the deviation from the target was 94 Hz in the context of [i], 204 Hz in the context of [u], and 407 Hz in the context of [o]. The target F2s of the coronal stop were the highest in English (1,929 Hz) and the lowest in French (1,662 Hz), and the deviation from the targets in the context of the high back vowel was the largest in French (257 Hz) and the smallest in English (73 Hz).

• 말소리와 음성과학
• /
• 제3권4호
• /
• pp.33-43
• /
• 2011

The present study investigates supralaryngeal articulatory characteristics of denti-alveolar (coronal) stops /t, $t^h$, $t^*$/ and /n/ in /aCa/ context in Seoul Korean. An Electromagnetic Articulograph (EMA, Carstens) was used to explore kinematics of the consonants by examining the kinematic data of the tongue tip (the primary articulator for the coronal consonants), along with some additional supplementary position data of the tongue body, the tongue dorsum and the jaw. The results showed that the constriction duration was the most robust articulatory correlates of the three-way stop contrast with a pattern of /t/$t^h$/$t^*$/. The contrast was further reinforced by the tongue body position (higher for /$t^h$, $t^*$/) and the tongue tip opening displacement (less displaced for /$t^h$, $t^*$/). The articulation of /n/ was quite similar to that of the lenis /t/ in terms of the constriction duration, and it was different from the oral stops in that it was produced with larger tongue tip displacement and lower jaw position than the oral stops, indicating its weak articulatory nature. The results are also discussed in comparison with those of bilabial stops with implications that the three-way contrast may be kinematically expressed differently depending on the physiological constraints imposed on the primary articulator (the tongue tip versus the lips). The present study, therefore, provides new articulatory (kinematic) data of denti-alveolar consonants in Korean, and demonstrates that the three-way stops, that have been known to differ primarily in their laryngeal settings, are indeed produced with kinematic distinctions at the supralaryngeal level.

• 음성과학
• /
• 제11권1호
• /
• pp.87-103
• /
• 2004

This study investigates Korean listeners' perception of the English stop epenthesis between the sonorant and fricative segments. Specifically this study investigates 1) how often English epenthetic stops are perceived by native Korean listeners, given the fact that Korean does not allow consonant clusters in codas; and 2) whether perception of the epenthetic stops, which are optional phonetic variations, not phonemes, could be improved without any explicit training. 120 English non-words with a mono-syllable structure of CVC1C2, where C1=/m, n, $\eta$, 1/, and C2=/s, $\theta$, $\int$/, were given to two groups of native Korean listeners, and they were asked to detect the target stops such as [p], [t], and [k]. The number of their responses were computed to determine how often listeners succeed in recovering the string of segments produced by the native English speaker. The results of the present study show that English epenthetic stops are poorly identified by native Korean listeners with low English proficiency, even in the case where stimuli with strong acoustic cues are provided with, but perception of epenthetic stops is closely related with listeners' English proficiency, showing the possibility of the improvement of perception. It further shows that perception of epenthetic stops shows asymmetry between coronal and non-coronal consonants.

• 말소리와 음성과학
• /
• 제3권4호
• /
• pp.71-81
• /
• 2011

This paper investigated how prosodic position and word type affect the phonetic structure of Korean coronal stops. Initial segments of prosodic domains were known to be more strongly articulated and longer relative to prosodic domain-medial segments. However, there are few studies examining whether the properties of prosodic domain-initial segments are affected by the information content of words (real vs. nonsense words). In addition, since the scope of domain-initial effect was known to be local to the initial consonant and the effects on the following vowel have been found to be limited, it is thus worth examining whether the prosodic domain-initial effect extends into the vowel after the initial consonant in a systematic way across different prosodic domains. The acoustic properties of Korean coronal stops (lenis /t/, aspirated /$t^h$/, and tense /t'/) were compared across Intonational Phrase, Phonological Phrase and Word-initial positions both in real and nonsense words. The durational intervals such as VOT and CV duration were cumulatively lengthened for /t/ and /$t^h$/ in the higher prosodic domain-initial positions. However, tense stop /t'/ did not show any variation as a function of prosodic position and word type. The domain-initial lenis stop showed significantly longer duration in nonsense words than in real words. But the prosodic domain-initial effect was not found in the properties of F0 and [H1-H2] of the vowel after initial stops. The present study provided evidence that speakers tend to enhance speech clarity when there is less contextual information as in prosodic domain-initial position and in nonsense words.

• 음성과학
• /
• 제10권1호
• /
• pp.41-58
• /
• 2003

Coronal/non-coronal asymmetry refers to the typological trend wherein coronals rather than non-coronals are more likely targets in place assimilation. Although the phenomenon has been accounted for by resorting to the notion of unmarkedness in formalistic approaches to sound patterns, the examination of rules and representations cannot answer why there should be such a process in the first place. Furthermore, the motivation of coronal/non-coronal asymmetry has remained controversial to date even in the field of phonetics. The present study investigated the listeners' perception of coronal and non-coronal stops in the context of $VC_{1}C_{2}V$ after critically reviewing the three types of phonetic accounts for coronal/non-coronal asymmetry, i.e., articulatory, perceptual, and gestural overlap accounts. An experiment was conducted to test whether the phenomenon in question may occur, given the listeners' lack of perceptual ability to identify weaker place cues in VC transitions as argued by Ohala (1990), i.e., coronals have weak place cues that cause listeners' misperception. 5pliced nonsense $VC_{1}C_{2}V$ utterances were given to 20 native speakers of English and Korean. Data analysis showed that majority of the subjects reported $C_{2}\;as\;C_{1}$. More importantly, the place of articulation of C1 did not affect the listeners' identification. Compared to non-coronals, coronals did not show a significantly lower rate of correct identifications. This study challenges the view that coronal/non-coronal asymmetry is attributable to the weak place cues of coronals, providing evidence that CV cues are more perceptually salient than VC cues. While perceptual saliency account may explain the frequent occurrence of regressive assimilation across languages, it cannot be extended to coronal/non-coronal asymmetry.

• 한국콘텐츠학회논문지
• /
• 제10권5호
• /
• pp.460-466
• /
• 2010

한국 학생들이 한국어에 없는 영어 마찰음을 파열음으로 대치하여 잘못 발음하는 경향은 잘 알려진 반면에 동일한 영어 마찰음을 어떻게 인지하는지에 대한 연구는 상대적으로 덜 알려졌다. 따라서 한국 대학생들이 마찰음을 포함하는 영어 전방 설정자음을 인지하는데도 마찬가지로 어려움을 느끼는지 알아보기 위하여 40명의 한국 대학생들을 대상으로 영어 전방 설정 자음이 들어간 임시어를 4가지 다른 운율적 위치(CV, VC, VCVV, VVCV)에서 인지하는 테스트를 실행하였다. 실험 참가자들은 CV나 VCVV처럼 강한 위치의 자음을 VC나 VVCV의 약한 위치보다 더 정확하게 판별하는 인지패턴을 보여주었으며, 한국학생들이 각 자음별로 흔히 혼동하는 자음들을 혼동도표로 제시하였다. 특히 한국 학생들이 인지하는데어려움을 느낀 영어 자음은 한국어 목록에는 없는 [$\theta$]와 [$\eth$] 이었으며, 한국 학생들의 인지 혼동 패턴은 파열음과 마찰음을 모두 틀린 마찰음으로 우세하게 인지한다는 점에서 일반적으로 알려진 발화 오류 패턴과는 달랐다. 또한 VC 위치에서는 인지상의 무성음화가, 모음 사이에서는 인지상의 유성음화가 각각 확인 되었다. 이러한 결과에 근거하여 교육 현장에서 적용될 수 있는 교육적 함축점이 제시되었다.

• 비교문화연구
• /
• 제20권
• /
• pp.5-27
• /
• 2010

This paper studies the relation between canonical/variegated babble (CB/VB) and early speech in an infant acquiring Mandarin Chinese from 9 to 17 months. The infant was audio-and video-taped in her home almost every week. The data analyzed here come from 1,621 utterances extracted from 23 sessions ranging from 30 minutes to one hour, from age 00:09;07 to 01:05;27. The data was digitized, and segments from 23 sessions were transcribed in narrow IPA and coded for analysis. Babble was coded from age 00:09;07 to 01:00;00, and words were coded from 01:00;00 to 01:05;27, proto-words appeared at 11 months, and some babble was still present after 01:10;00. 3821 segments were counted in CB/VB utterances, plus the segments found in 899 word tokens. The data transcription was completed and checked by the author and was rechecked by two other researchers who majored in Chinese phonetics in order to ensure the reliability, we reached an agreement of 95.65%. Mandarin Chinese is phonetically very rich in consonants, especially affricates: it has aspirated and unaspirated stops in labial, alveolar, and velar places of articulation; affricates and fricatives in alveolar, retroflex, and palatal places; /f/; labial, alveolar, and velar nasals; a lateral;[h]; and labiovelar and palatal glides. In the child's pre-speech phonetic repertoire, 7 different consonants and 10 vowels were transcribed at 00:09;07. By 00:10;16, the number of phones was more than doubled (17 consonants, 25 vowels), but the rate of increase slowed after 11 months of age. The phones from babbling remained active throughout the child's early and subsequent speech. The rank order of the occurrence of the major class types for both CB and early speech was: stops, approximants, nasals, affricates, fricatives and lateral. As expected, unaspirated stops outnumbered aspirated stops, and front stops and nasals were more frequent than back sounds in both types of utterances. The fact that affricates outnumbered fricatives in the child's late babble indicates the pre-speech influence of the ambient language. The analysis of the data also showed that: 1) the phonetic characteristics of CB/VB and early meaningful speech are extremely similar. The similarities of CB/VB and speech prove that the two are deeply related; 2) The infant has demonstrated similar preferences for certain types of sounds in the two stages; 3) The infant's babbling was patterned at segmental level, and this regularity was similarly evident in the early speech of children. The three types being coronal plus front vowel; labial plus central and dorsal plus back vowel exhibited much overlap in the phonetic forms of CB/ VB and early speech. So the child's CB/ VB at this stage already shared the basic architecture, composition and representation of early speech. The evidence of similarity between CB/VB and early speech leaves no doubt that phones present in CB/VB are indeed precursors to early speech.