• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.45-51
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• 2016

This study examined the deletion of onset consonant in the word-internal structure in spontaneous Seoul Korean speech. It used the dataset of speakers in their 20s extracted from the Korean Corpus of Spontaneous Speech (Yun et al., 2015). The proportion of deletion of word-internal onset consonants was analyzed using the linear mixed-effects regression model. The factors that promoted the deletion of onsets were primarily the types of consonants and their phonetic contexts. The results showed that onset deletion was more likely to occur for a lenis velar stop [k] than the other consonants, and in the phonetic contexts, when the preceding vowel was a low central vowel [a]. Moreover, some speakers tended to more frequently delete onset consonants (e.g., [k] and [n]) than other speakers, which reflected individual differences. This study implies that word-internal onsets undergo a process of gradient reduction within individuals' articulatory strategies.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.103-114
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• 2002

Language plays a central role in everyday communication activities. Therefore, an individual need to be able to use language to communicate with confidence and without fear. One of the major fears that people have is the fear of communication. This fear is most of the time due to a lack of confidence in communicating in a particular language or due to poor proficiency in the language. In some cases it can also be due to attitudinal problems. In the context of teaching and learning English as a second or foreign language, students can have a great fear of using English with confidence. This fear can be an acute one and thus students may avoid using English to communicate. However, non native speakers of English need to be highly competent in the use of the English language for a variety of communicative purposes particularly in meeting the challenges of globalisation and that of the digital age. This article presents some insights on language apprehension found among communication undergraduates who are non native speakers of 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.

• Journal of Korean language education
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.85-108
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• 2018

This study pointed out the reality that many novice Korean language teachers who lack rater training are scoring the learners' writing skill. The study performed and analyzed a case where pre-service teachers were educated in order to explore the possibility of promoting rater training in a Korean language teacher training course. The pre-service teachers majoring in Korean language education at the graduate school scored TOPIK compositions and were provided feedback by the FACETS program, which were further discussed at the rater meeting. In three scoring processes, the raters scored with conscious of own rating patterns and showed positive change or over correction due to excessive consciousness. Consequentially, ongoing training can improve rating ability, and considering the fact that professional rater training is hard to progress, the method composed of FACETS analysis and rater training revealed positive effects. On the other hand, the rater training including native Korean and non-native(Chinese) speakers together showed no significant difference by mother tongue but by individual difference. This can be interpreted as a positive implication to the rating reliability of non-native speakers possessing advanced Korean language abilities. However, this must be supplemented through extended research.

• Language and Information
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.103-129
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• 2010

In this paper, I show that anaphora across speakers shows both dynamic and static sides. To capture them all formally, I will adopt semantics based on the assumption that variables range over individual concepts that connect epistemic alternatives. As information increases, a variable can take a different range of possible individual concepts. This is captured by the notion of virtual individual (= vi), a set of individual concepts which are indistinguishable in an information state. The use of a pronoun involves two information states, one for the antecedent, which is always part of the common ground, and the other for the pronoun. Information increase changes vis for variables in the common ground. A pronoun can be used felicitously if there is a unique virtual individual in the information state for the antecedent which does not split in two or more distinctive virtual individuals in the information state for the pronoun. The felicity condition for cross-speaker anaphora can be satisfied in declaratives involving modality, interrogatives and imperatives in a rather less demanding way, because in these cases the utterance does not necessarily require non-trivial personal information for proper use of a pronoun.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.83-93
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• 2004

The objectives of this study are to analyze Korean speakers' pronunciations of various Japanese /p/ patterns and to provide desirable pronunciation models. This is a part of an ongoing research that aims to propose a useful method of teaching Japanese pronunciation of /p/ to Koreans. The experimental data consist of /p/ phonemes in word initial, word medial, and 'yoon' positions. Yoon must be written in small size after a letter and it only makes a syllable with the preceding letter in Japanese. There were 22 different phoneme positions. They were pronounced by 48 Japanese majoring students (24 females and 24 males), who were in their twenties and were raised in Daejeon and vicinity. The individual pronunciations were collected and digitized into 528 files. The results show that Koreans pronounced the Japanese phoneme /p/ in a variety of ways, according to the auditory environments in which the phoneme was tested: as [ph] in word initial, [pp] or [ph] in word medial, and [ph] in 'yoon', unlike native speakers who pronounced Japanese /p/ as [ph] in word initial, [pp] in word medial and, and [pp] or [ph] in 'yoon'.

• Journal of Multimedia Information System
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.197-202
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• 2019

Society advances through technology, and technology has changed many lifestyles. The need for food is varying, but the availability of food is constantly changing as trends in production change. Combining the food industry and technology, a robot that delivers food and also cooks it has been developed. The time has come for a combination of food content and technology to advance the restaurant industry. This study discusses the application of a recommended food content media providing system using a curation engine that recommends contents according to individual tastes and preferences for the convenience of those who use food contents, using artificial intelligence speakers. We discuss the technologies required to develop video contents optimized for AI speakers with screens and shapes, combined with inset top boxes.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.21-29
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• 2016

This study examined how native Korean speakers realize the acoustic characteristics of /d, t/ flaps in American English. Fourteen subjects, who had lived in foreign countries for less than one year, read words containing the alveolar stops in flapping environments. /d/ (91%) became flaps more frequently than /t/ (42%). The closure durations for /d/ flaps were significantly longer than /t/ flaps, and the durations of the preceding vowels were not significantly different between /d/ and /t/ flaps. Female learners demonstrated a higher percentage of /t/ flapping than their male counterparts. Differences in flap patterns were observed among individual learners.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.19-27
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• 2019

Lateral approximants are well known as having complex articulatory characteristics, which vary cross-linguistically, across speakers, and across utterances. However, less attention has been paid to the articulation of Korean laterals, which do not contrast with a rhotic and may thus exhibit greater-than-normal variability. The focus of this study is to investigate the general articulatory characteristics of the Korean lateral [l] as well as the articulatory variation using novel 3D ultrasound imaging methods. The results of this study revealed significant between-speaker variation and some vowel-dependent variation with regard to the articulation of the Korean lateral [l], which has not been reported previously. Even though all participants in this study showed an anterior occlusion, the place of articulation and the size of the occlusion varied greatly across speakers. The data also revealed that left-right asymmetry is present in the articulation of the Korean lateral. The individual variation of the Korean lateral [l] suggests that it has a large articulatory-acoustic space for variation, since it has no contrasting sound that causes perceptual confusion.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.39-47
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• 2016

While acoustic studies in the past decade documented a raised /o/ by showing their lowered first formants (F1) almost overlapped with those of high back vowel /u/, no consensus has been made in terms of how this /o/-raising affects the vowels as a system in Seoul Korean. The current study aimed to investigate the age- and gender-related differences of the relative distance among the vowels to better understand the influence of this on-going sound change on the vowel system. We measured the static and dynamic spectral characteristics (F1 and F2) of the seven Korean monophthong vowels /e a ʌ o u ɨ i/ in the spontaneous speech of Seoul Corpus, and depicted the patterns of 30 individual speakers (10 speakers in each group of teens, 20s and 40s) as a function of age and gender. The static spectral examination showed low F1 values of /o/ in the spontaneous speech corpus confirming the vowel /o/ raising, and also revealed greater F2 values of /u, ɨ/ suggesting their anterior articulations. The tendencies were stronger when the speakers were younger and female. The spectral trajectories further showed that the F1 and F2 between /o/ and /u/ were differentiated throughout the vowel mid-point although the trajectories gradually merged near the vowel mid point in the older male speakers' productions. The acoustic evidence of contrast among /o, u, ɨ/ supports that the raised /o/ is not indicative of a merger with /u/ but rather implying a chain-like vowel shift in the Seoul Korean.