• Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.203-216
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• 2000

The purpose of this study is to revisit the property of the Korean plain stops in intervocalic position. More specifically, focusing on a word-internal, intervocalic position, this study investigates 1) how often speakers pronounce intervocalic. stops as fully voiced, 2) in what amount each speaker voice the plain stops during the stop closure, 3) whether the preceding or the following vowel influences the voicing of target consonants, and 4) the fundamental frequency pattern at the vowel onset after the target consonant shows any consistent pattern, regardless of whether voicing is present during the closure. The results of this study give strong support for the phonetic account of the voicing distinction in Korean. (Jun 1995, 1996).

• Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.35-48
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• 2006

The present study examined whether words with higher frequency have more exposure to the lenition process such as intervocalic stop voicing or /h/ reduction in the production of the Korean speakers. Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 tested if word-internal intervocalic voicing and /h/ reduction occur more often in the words with higher frequency than less frequent words respectively. Results showed that the rate of voicing was not significantly different between the high frequency group and the low frequency group; rather both high and low frequency words were shown to be fully voiced in this prosodic position. However, intervocalic /h/s were deleted more in high frequency words than in low frequency words. Low frequency words showed that other phonetic variants such as [h] and [w] were found more often than in high frequency group. Thus the results of the present study are indefinitive as to the relationship between the word frequency and lenition with the data at hand.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.7-18
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• 2008

The purpose of the present study is to test whether VOT values of the Korean plain stops in intervocalic position are encoded differently by individual speakers. In Scobbie (2006), the VOT values to the /p/-/b/ voicing contrast in Shetland Isles English were found to demonstrate a high degree of inter-speaker variation. More importantly such variation was not arbitrary: first, there was an inverse relationship between the amount of prevoicing for /b/ and the duration of aspiration for /p/. Second, the inter-speaker variation was shown to be similar between the subjects and their parents. These results suggest that the phonetic targets for VOT are specified in fine detail by speakers. The present study further explores this issue in terms of testing 1) whether the likelihood and the amount of voicing for the intervocalic plain stops in Korean show inter-speaker variation; 2) whether the likelihood and the exact amount of voicing for the intervocalic plain stops in Korean are closely related to the amount of aspiration for the Korean intervocalic aspirated stops. The results of the study suggest that the voicing of intervocalic plain stops in Korean varied according to the individual speakers, but it did not seem to be directly interrelated with the amount of aspiration of the aspirated stop sin the same phonological position.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.35-51
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• 2000

The goal of this paper is to examine how Case Drop (the drop of the case markers) correlates with the prosodic structure in Korean. On the assumption that intervocalic Lenis Stop Voicing (LSV) applies within the domain of the Accentual Phrase (AP), voicing analyses are performed on intervocalic lenis stop consonants before and after Case Drop. A statistical analysis reveals that the drop of the nominative and accusative case markers significantly alter the AP structure. Pitch values will then be extracted to verify that such changes in the AP structure conform to the pitch properties proposed for the AP (Jun 1993, 1998). The results show that the AP structure suggested by LSV does not always coincide with that imposed by the pitch properties.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.17-26
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• 1999

It has been claimed that Korean mid-vocalic voiceless unaspirated lax stops are phonetically realized with voicing throughout the oral closure phase. Acoustic measurements were undertaken to examine the claim with four Korean native speakers using /$V_1CV_2$/ words where the vowel ($V_1\;=\;V_2$) was /i, a, u/ and the C was voiceless unaspirated lax stops /p, t, k/. Findings: (1) During mid-vocalic stops /k/ and /p/ the vowel /u/ was accompanied generally by a significant increase in voice cessation time as percentage of the oral closure interval (PCT) than the vowel /a/, regardless of subjects, whereas in mid-vocalic alveolar stop /t/ the effects of vowels on PCT were subject-dependent, (2) The effects of vowels on PCT were significantly greater in mid-vocalic /k/ than /p/, regardless of subjects, (3) The mean PCT, averaged across six tokens, ranged from 17% to100%, giving overall mean 61% in which the standard deviation was ${\pm}30$, and (4) Overall % of the total of mid-vocalic unaspirated lax stops were produced with a substantial period of devocing and voicing lag. Considering these results, it is difficult to agree with the existing claims that Korean voiceless unaspirated lax stops are phonetically realized with voicing throughout the oral closure phase. Other phonetic variables, including the durations of pre/post-stop vowels, voice onset time, voice cessation time, and the duration of oral closure, were measured.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.57-61
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• 2020

Previous research has indicated that the patterns of phonetic modulations induced by prominence are not consistent across languages but are conditioned by sound systems specific to a given language. Most studies examining the prominence effects in Korean have been restricted to segments in word-initial and phrase-initial positions. The present study, thus, set out to explore the prominence effects for Korean stop consonants in word-medial intervocalic positions. A total of 16 speakers of Seoul Korean (8 males, 8 females) produced word-medial intervocalic lenis and aspirated stops with and without prominence. The prominence was induced by contrast focus on the phonation-type contrast, that is, lenis vs. aspirated stops. Our results showed that F0 of vowels following both lenis and aspirated stops became higher when the target stops received focus than when they did not, whereas voice onset time (VOT) and voicing during stop closure for both lenis and aspirated stops did not differ between the focus and no-focus conditions. The findings add to our understanding of diverse patterns of prominence-induced strengthening on the acoustic realizations of segments.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.455-464
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• 2009

Based on the observation that Korean speakers of English have difficulties in producing English fricatives, a perception experiment was designed to investigate whether Korean speakers also have difficulties perceiving English labial consonants including fricatives. Forty Korean college students were asked to perform a multiple-choice identification test. The consonant perception test consisted of nonce words which contained English labial consonants [p, b, f, v] in 4 different prosodic locations: initial onset position, intervocalic position before stress, intervocalic position after stress, and final coda position. The general perception pattern was that the mean accuracy rates were higher in strong position like CV and VCVV than in weak position like VC and VVCV. The difficulties in perceiving the English targets resulted mainly from bidirectional manner confusion between stop and fricative across all prosodic locations. The other types of misidentification were due to place confusion as well as voicing confusion. Place confusion was generated mostly by the target [f] in all prosodic position due to acoustic properties. Voicing confusion was heavily influenced by prosodic position. The misperception of the participants was accounted for by phonetic properties and/or the participants' native language properties.