• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.11-17
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• 2020

Non-tonal language speakers may have difficulty learning second language lexical tones. In the present study, we explored this issue with Korean-speaking learners of Mandarin Chinese (i.e., non-tonal first language speakers) by examining their perception and production of Mandarin lexical tones. In the perception experiment, the Korean learners were asked to listen to the tone of each stimulus and assign it to one of four Mandarin lexical tones using the response keys; in the production experiment, the learners provided speech production data for the lexical tones and then their productions were identified by native listeners of Mandarin Chinese. Our results showed that the Korean learners of Mandarin Chinese had difficulty in perceptually distinguishing Tone 2 and Tone 3, with the most frequent production error being the mispronunciation of Tone 3 as Tone 2. We also investigated whether unfamiliar non-native phonemes (i.e., Chinese phonemes) that do not exist in the native language phonemic inventory (i.e., Korean) may hinder the processing of the non-native lexical tones. We found no evidence for such effects, neither for the perception nor for the production of the tones.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.7-23
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• 2008

This paper investigates tonal patterns of the prosodic constituents of an AP and a PWD in Korean and their relation with the morphological/syntactic structure. Specifically, this paper asks the following questions: First, if there are more than one PWD in an AP, how is each PWD specified in terms of tones? Secondly, in case that there is only one PWD in an AP that consists of several morphemes, is there any preference of the association between tones and the morphemes that constitute that PWD? Thirdly, if an AP dominates a PWD and if a PWD contains at least one morpheme of the lexical category, it follows that an AP should contain at least one morpheme of the lexical category. Can this be verified with the experimental data? In order to answer these questions, Experiment I and II were conducted with the target material consisting of a stem and suffixes that varied in length. The results of this preliminary test show that as the number of syllables in the target material increases, the more number of an AP tonal pattern occurs in it and as a result, in some cases, an AP consisting of suffixes only may occur.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.117-123
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• 2014

This study investigated the intonation patterns of accentual phrase in Jeju dialect. 9 speakers (Experiment 1) and 6 speakers (Experiment 2) read a carrier sentence '__ youngah miwonghumnida' with a target accentual phrase varying its number of syllables from 1 to 8. The results showed that like Seoul dialect pattern could be the basic pattern of accentual phase in Jeju dialect even though several differences were observed in the realization of each tone: Flat staircase-like tones in L, M, and even in H were often observed, and a very small difference in F0 between intial L and +H was found in many speakers. For some of these differences, this paper tried to give an explanation still in the Intonational Phonology framework. However, introducing M tone as a lexical tone was also suggested as one possible solution. Finally, unlike Seoul dialect, most speakers showed pattern in an accentual phrase beginning with a strong consonant, i.e., aspirated and unaspirated obstruents including /h/ and /s/.