• Journal of Korean language education
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.25-51
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• 2017

This study aimed to identify the differences in pitch perception between tonal and non-tonal language listeners. A total of 60 Korean and Chinese listeners participated in the perception test. A two-syllable nonsense word /paba/ was manipulated in five steps. The pitch height or contour on the second syllable was raised or lowered. Both groups were asked to select which of the two syllables had the higher pitch. The findings showed that the majority of Korean listeners (GK) perceived decreased pitch as each peak of the syllable was lowered and perceived increased pitch as it was raised, which means the pitch height is a primary perceptual cue for GK. However, Chinese listeners (GC) perceived sensitive pitch movements as the pitch contour changed. GC's perception may presumably be affected by the L1's tone sandhi. We found it reasonable to assume that language experience has a significant effect on the cross-linguistic perceptual differences between tone and non-tonal language listeners.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.241-254
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• 2003

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the sentence comprehension strategies used by Korean/English bilingual children when they listened to sentences of their first language, i.e., Korean. The framework of competition model was employed to analyze the influence of the second language, i.e., English, during comprehension of Korean sentences. The participants included 10 bilingual children (ages 7;4-13;0) and 20 Korean-speaking monolingual children(ages 5;7-6;10) with similar levels of development in Korean language as bilingual children. In an act-out procedure, the children were asked to determine the agent in sentences composed of two nouns and a verb with varying conditions of three cues (case-marker, animacy, and word-order). The results revealed that both groups of children used the case marker cues as the strongest cue among the three. The bilingual children relied on case-marker cues even more than the monolingual children. However, the bilingual children used animacy cues significantly less than the monolingual children. There were no significant differences between the groups in the use of word-order cues. The bilingual children appeared less effective in utilizing animacy cues in Korean sentence comprehension due to the backward transfer from English where the cue strength of animacy is very weak. The influence of the second language on the development of the first language in bilingual children was discussed.