• Journal of Korean language education
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.1-23
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• 2018

This paper investigates how adult Mandarin- and English- speaking learners of Korean perceive Korean vowels, with focus on the effect of the first language (L1) and the second language (L2) acoustic relationship, as well as the influence of Korean language experience. For this study, native Mandarin and Canadian English speakers who have learned Korean as a foreign language, as well as a control group of native Korean speakers, participated in two experiments. Experiment 1 was designed to examine acoustic similarities between Korean and English vowels, as well as Korean and Mandarin vowels to predict which Korean vowels are relatively easy, or difficult for L2 learners to perceive. The linear discriminant analysis (Klecka, 1980) based on their L1-L2 acoustic similarity predicted that L2 Mandarin learners would have perceptual difficulty rankings for Korean vowels as follows: (the easiest) /i, a, e/ >> /ɨ, ʌ, o, u/ (most difficult), whereas L2 English learners would have perceptual difficulty rankings for Korean vowels as follows: (the easiest) /i, a, e, ɨ, ʌ/ >> /o, u/ (most difficult). The goal of Experiment 2 was to test how accurately L2 Mandarin and English learners perceive Korean vowels /ɨ, ʌ, o, u/ which are considered to be difficult for L2 learners. The results of a mixed-effects logistic model revealed that English listeners showed higher identification accuracy for Korean vowels than Mandarin listeners, indicating that having a larger L1 vowel inventory than the L2 facilitates L2 vowel perception. However, both groups have the same ranking of Korean vowel perceptual difficulty: ɨ > ʌ > u > o. This finding indicates that adult learners of Korean can perceive the new vowel /ɨ/, which does not exist in their L1, more accurately than the vowel /o/, which is acoustically similar to vowels in their L1, suggesting that L2 learners are more likely to establish additional phonetic categories for new vowels. In terms of the influence of experience with L2, it was found that identification accuracy increases as Korean language experience rises. In other words, the more experienced English and Mandarin learners of Korean are, the more likely they are to have better identification accuracy in Korean vowels than less experienced learners of Korean. Moreover, there is no interaction between L1 background and L2 experience, showing that identification accuracy of Korean vowels is higher as Korean language experience increases regardless of their L1 background. Overall, these findings of the two experiments demonstrated that acoustic similarity between L1 and L2 sounds using the LDA model can partially predict perceptual difficulty in L2 acquisition, indicating that other factors such as perceptual similarity between L1 and L2, the merge of Korean /o/ and /u/ may also influence their Korean vowel perception.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.20
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• pp.5-27
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• 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.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.18B no.2
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• pp.87-92
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• 2011

In Korean documents, there are diverse spellings of transliterated foreign loanwords. This fact diminishes the performance of information retrieval systems in that a foreign word can be recognized differently, which is to say, as two or several different words. Thus, information retrieval systems require preprocessing to correct nonstandard loanword spellings prior to searching and recognizing corresponding equivalent words. This paper proposes a method that improves precision and processing efficiency using the Korean alphabet's viable prefix, which prunes a virtual tree from which candidate loanwords are created.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.15B no.1
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• pp.17-24
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• 2008

This paper proposes Sasang constitution classification through speech signals analysis values and comparison. For this, this paper wishes to propose Taeumin classification method of output values signals that comes out speech signal analysis to connect with process classification of Soeumin through skin diagnosis by first step in the whole system configuration to provide for objective index of Sasang constitution. First of all, these characteristic of voices wish to extract phonetic elements that each Sasang constitution groups' clear features. Also, we wish to classify Taeumin through constitution groups' difference and similarity on the basis of results value. Finally, the effectiveness of this method is verified through the experiments.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.15-21
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• 2019

Korean and English are both known to show on-focus pitch range expansion and post-focus pitch range compression (PFC). But it is not clear if this prosodic similarity would make it easy for Korean speakers to learn English focus prosody. In the present study, we conducted a production experiment using phone number strings to examine whether Korean learners of English produce a native-like focus prosody. Korean learners of English were classified into three groups (advanced, intermediate and low) according to their English proficiency and were compared to native speakers. Results show that intermediate and low groups of speakers did not increase duration, intensity, and pitch in the focus positions, nor did they compress those cues in the post-focus positions. Advanced speakers noticeably increased the acoustic cues in the focus positions to a similar extent as native speakers. However, their performance in post-focus positions was quite far from that of native speakers in terms of pitch and excursion size. These results thus demonstrate a lack of positive transfer of focus prosody from Korean to English in L2 learning, and learners may have to relearn it from scratch, which is consistent with a previous finding. More importantly, the results provide further support for the view proposed in other works that acoustic properties of PFC were not easily transferred from one language to another.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.3-16
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• 2010

This study aims at setting the hierarchy of difficulty of the 7 Korean monophthongs for Mongolian learners of Korean according to Prator's theory based on the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis. In addition to that, it will be shown that the difficulties and errors for Mongolian learners of Korean as a second or foreign language proceed directly from this hierarchy of difficulty. This study began by looking at the speeches of 60 Mongolians for Mongolian monophthongs; data were investigated and analyzed into formant frequencies F1 and F2 of each vowel. Then, the 7 Korean monophthongs were compared with the resultant Mongolian formant values and are assigned to 3 levels, 'same', 'similar' or 'different sound'. The findings in assessing the differences of the 8 nearest equivalents of Korean and Mongolian vowels are as follows: First, Korean /a/ and /$\wedge$/ turned out as a 'same sound' with their counterparts, Mongolian /a/ and /ɔ/. Second, Korean /i/, /e/, /o/, /u/ turned out as a 'similar sound' with each their Mongolian counterparts /i/, /e/, /o/, /u/. Third, Korean /ɨ/ which is nearest to Mongolian /i/ in terms of phonetic features seriously differs from it and is thus assigned to 'different sound'. And lastly, Mongolian /$\mho$/ turned out as a 'different sound' with its nearest counterpart, Korean /u/. Based on these findings the hierarchy of difficulty was constructed. Firstly, 4 Korean monophthongs /a/, /$\wedge$/, /i/, /e/ would be Level 0(Transfer); they would be transferred positively from their Mongolian counterparts when Mongolians learn Korean. Secondly, Korean /o/, /u/ would be Level 5(Split); they would require the Mongolian learner to make a new distinction and cause interference in learning the Korean language because Mongolian /o/, /u/ each have 2 similar counterpart sounds; Korean /o, u/, /u, o/. Thirdly, Korean /ɨ/ which is not in the Mongolian vowel system will be Level 4(Overdifferentiation); the new vowel /ɨ/ which bears little similarity to Mongolian /i/, must be learned entirely anew and will cause much difficulty for Mongolian learners in speaking and writing Korean. And lastly, Mongolian /$\mho$/ will be Level 2(Underdifferentiation); it is absent in the Korean language and doesn‘t cause interference in learning Korean as long as Mongolian learners avoid using it.

• MALSORI
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• no.4
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• pp.20-30
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• 1982

The aim of this paper is to analyse difficulties of the pronunciation in swedish vowels encountered by Koreans learners and to seek solutions in order to correct the possible errors. In the course of the analysis the swedish and Korean vowels in question are compared with the purpose of describing differences aha similarities between these two systems. This contrastive description is largely based on the students' articulatory speech level ana the writer's auditory , judgement . The following points are discussed : 1 ) Vowel length as a distinctive feature in Swedish compared with that of Korean. 2) A special attention is paid on the Swedish vowel [w:] that is characterized by its peculiar type of lip rounding. 3) The six pairs of Swedish vowels that are phonologically contrastive but difficult for Koreans to distinguish one from the other: [y:] ~ [w:], [i:] ~ [y:], [e:] ~ [${\phi}$:], [w;] ~ [u:] [w:] ~ [$\theta$], [$\theta$] ~ [u] 4) The r-colored vowel in the case of the postvocalic /r/ that is very common in American English is not allowed in English sound sequences. The r-colored vowel in the American English pattern has to be broken up and replaced hi-segmental vowel-consonant sequences . Korean accustomed to the American pronunciation are warned in this respect. For a more distinct articulation of the postvocalic /r/ trill [r] is preferred to fricative [z]. 5) The front vowels [e, $\varepsilon, {\;}{\phi}$) become opener variants (${\ae}, {\;}:{\ae}$] before / r / or supradentals. The results of the analysis show that difficulties of the pronunciation of the target language (Swedish) are mostly due to the interference from the Learner's source language (Korean). However, the Learner sometimes tends to get interference also from the other foreign language with which he or she is already familiar when he or she finds in that language more similarity to the target language than in his or her own mother tongue. Hence this foreign language (American English) in this case functions as a second language for Koreans in Learning Swedish.