• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제5권2호
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• pp.53-58
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• 2013

The purpose of this study is to compare the first two vowel formants of the stressed and unstressed English vowels produced by ten young males (in their twenties and thirties) and ten old males (in their forties or fifties) from the Buckeye Corpus of Conversational Speech. The results indicate that the stressed and unstressed vowels, /i/ and $/{\ae}/$ in particular, from the two groups are different in their formant frequencies. In addition, the vowel space of the unstressed vowels is somewhat smaller than that of the stressed vowels. Specifically, the range of the second formant of the unstressed vowels and that of the first formant of the unstressed front vowels were compressed. The findings from this study can be applied to the pronunciation training for the Korean learners of English vowels. We propose that teachers of English pay attention to the stress patterns of English vowels as well as their formant frequencies.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제6권1호
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• pp.39-45
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• 2014

This study investigates twenty four Korean females' production of English front vowels focusing on the distinction in /i/ vs /ɪ/ and /ɛ/ vs /${\ae}$/ and formant values of stressed and unstressed vowels compared with those of native English speakers. The Korean learners were asked to read a textbook passage which includes ten sentences including target vowels. The major results indicate that: (1) Korean learners have trouble producing a distinct version (tense and lax) of front vowels in the paragraph reading; (2) The vowel space of the stressed vowels in a paragraph is smaller than that of embedded sentences; and (3) The vowel quality of the unstressed vowels produced by the Korean learners is similar to that of the native English speakers. The findings from this study can be applied to the pronunciation teaching for the Korean learners of English vowels and realization of English stress.

• 음성과학
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• 제12권4호
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• pp.167-180
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• 2005

The present study examines the phonetic realizations of the unstressed weak vowel /e/ in English words produced by native and Korean ESL speakers. Traditionally, the stressed elements in utterance are considered to be prominent. In this sense, the unstressed weak vowel /e/ is predicted to be shorter in length, lower in pitch and intensity than the stressed vowels. The experiment shows that native English speakers correlate the unstressed weak vowel /e/ with both shorter duration and lower pitch; Korean ESL speakers correlate it with lower pitch only. We cannot find any significant statistical difference in intensity between /e/ and the stressed vowels in both cases. This study suggests it is important to acquire and produce the correct prosodic correlates of the unstressed weak vowel /e/ for Korean ESL speakers to command more natural English intonation, since /e/ is the most common vowel in English speech and consists of the English foot rhythm along with stressed vowels.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제4권1호
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• pp.3-11
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• 2012

The aim of this paper is to examine the phonetic realizations of English unstressed vowels produced by advanced Korean learners (KLs) of English compared with English native speakers (NSs) focusing on the comparative study of English words and English loanwords. The result shows that KLs are usually not native-like in producing the English unstressed vowel /ə/ and loanword orthography affects the way the KLs produce /?/. The vowel quality of the unstressed vowels produced by the KLs is different from that of the NSs. In duration and pitch, KLs show significantly less difference between the stressed and unstressed vowels than do the NSs. The KLs usually have a high pitch in the stressed and the last syllable while the NSs usually produce peak F0 in the stressed syllable. When the KLs have a similar vowel quality with that of the NSs, they produce a shorter duration of the unstressed vowels. However, there is no correlation between the realization of the pitch and the vowel quality in KLs speech.

• 대한음성학회지:말소리
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• 제67호
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• pp.1-16
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• 2008

Stress effects upon Korean vowels were investigated with reference to rhythm. We measured three acoustic correlates (Duration: VOT, Vowel Duration; F0; Intensity) of stress from the seven pairs of stressed vs. unstressed Korean vowels /i, ${\varepsilon}(e)$, a, o, u, i, e/. The results of the experiment revealed that stress gave only inconsistent and weak effects on duration, which supports that Korean is not a stress-timed language as far as strong stress effects on duration are still considered crucial in stress-timing. On the other hand, Korean stressed vowels were most characterized with higher F0 and next with stronger intensity. But speakers generally showed tactics to reversely use F0 and intensity in stressing an utterance rather than proportionately strengthening both of the two acoustic correlates of stress. There was found great inter-speaker variability especially in the variations of duration.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제10권1호
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• pp.15-22
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• 2018

Stressed vowels in English are usually produced using longer duration, higher pitch, and greater intensity than unstressed vowels. However, many English as a foreign language (EFL) learners have difficulty producing English lexical stress because their mother tongues do not have such features. In order to investigate if certain non-native English speakers (Korean, Japanese, and Taiwanese-Chinese native speakers) are able to produce English lexical stress in a native-like manner, speech samples were extracted from the L2 learners' corpus known as AESOP (the Asian English Speech cOrpus Project). Sixteen disyllabic words were analyzed in terms of the ratio of duration, pitch, and intensity. The results demonstrate that non-native English speakers are able to produce English stress in a similar way to native English speakers, and all speakers (both native and non-native) show a tendency to use duration as the strongest cue in producing stress. The results also show that the duration ratio of native English speakers was significantly higher than that of non-native speakers, indicating that native speakers produce a bigger difference in duration between stressed and unstressed vowels.

• 음성과학
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• 제2권
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• pp.135-147
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• 1997

This thesis describes pronunciation differences of vowel lengths between Koreans and Americans speaking English words and sentences. This study also analizes the reasons for these differences with the help of acoustic instruments. Sixteen sentences and eight words were selected as the experimental material. The informants for this study were 9 males; 3 Americans and 6 Koreans, who were asked to pronounce the test words and sentences five times. In this study, the acoustical analysis to measure duration was done through computer digital techniques. According to the results of the experiment, duration of 8 English vowels pronounced between Koreans and Americans shows very different features. When Koreans pronounce English vowels, the duration of the stressed vowel in the sentence-final position is much shorter than in other positions, such as in the sentence-initial and in word position. On the contrary, when Americans pronounce English vowels, the duration of the stressed vowel in the sentence-final position is much longer than in other positions. If the correlation between length and stress were to be studied in a more detailed manner, it would give fundamental help to the study of relation between stress and length.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제6권3호
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• pp.101-108
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• 2014

This study investigates the relation among pitch range differences, speech rate and realization of stress. To identify the realization of the stress, vowel formants and durational differences of stressed and unstressed vowels are measured. The Korean learners were asked to read a textbook passage which includes nine sentences. The major results indicate that: (1) Korean speakers' pitch range is less than 50% of the native speakers; (2) There is a significantly negative relation between high-low pitch range and speech rate; (3) The vowel qualities and durations of the stressed and unstressed vowels are related to the speech rate. But these are not related to the high-low pitch range.

• 음성과학
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• 제7권1호
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• pp.187-201
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• 2000

This study was done to investigate the English vowels in relation to the foreign accent. In this study, I also tried to find out the foreign accent of the English diphthong /o/ and front low vowel /${\ae}$/ when Koreans speak English. The reason why I chose these vowels is that these vowels, /o/ and /${\ae}$/, are difficult for Koreans to discern and pronounce. Koreans show a foreign accent in their pronunciation. In order to find out the reason for a Korean foreign accent, experiments were carried out with the help of acoustic instruments. According to the results of the experiment, Koreans showed a foreign accent in their English pronunciation of vowels in relation to their utterance positions. Americans showed a final lengthening effect but Koreans showed a final shortening effect. This means that Koreans showed a foreign accent in the final stressed syllable of a sentence. In addition to this, the duration of two English vowels, /o/ and /${\ae}$/, showed considerably different features between Koreans and Americans. In fact, in the pronunciation of the diphthong /o/, the tongue moves from one position to another. The two articulations of a diphthong can be described as the nucleus plus a glide. However, most Koreans have no idea of this phenomenon and pronounce the diphthongs like two separate monophthongs. This causes a great difference in the lengths of English diphthong /o/ between Koreans and Americans.

• 중소기업융합학회논문지
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• 제6권4호
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• pp.51-57
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• 2016

본 연구는 강세음절이 있는 8개의 단어를 선정하여 원어민과 한국 대학생들 사이의 모음발음 길이를 스펙트로그램을 이용하여 측정한 후에 비교분석한 실험적 연구이다. 이 실험을 위하여 20명의 한국인 피 실험자들이 8개의 단어들이 들어있는 문장들을 발화하고 녹음하였으며, 음향적 특질들은 Praat 소프트웨어 프로그램을 이용하여 측정하였으며 그 결과를 통계분석 하였다. 분석결과, 8개의 강세모음에서 두 집단 간 차이가 있었으며, 7개의 강세모음에서는 그 차이가 유의미하였다. 두 실험집단 간 실험결과를 보면, 제1음절에 강세가 있는 모음들은 모두 집단 간 유의미한 차이를 보여주었다. 그 중에서 wonderful과 glasses의 강세음절에서는 유의미성이 크게 나타나고 있었는데, 특히 영어저모음 /${\ae}$/의 발음에서는 원어민이 한국인집단보다 훨씬 큰 길이로 발음하는 것을 알 수 있었다. 이러한 실험결과는 영어교육현장에서 외국인어투의 개선을 위한 수업자료로 활용할 수 있으리라 판단된다.