• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.129-136
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• 2013

This study investigated how acoustic characteristics (i.e., duration, F1, F2) of English high front vowels /i, ɪ/ are modulated by boundary- and prominence-induced strengthening in native vs. non-native (Korean) speech production. The study also examined how the durational difference in vowels due to the voicing of a following consonant (i.e., voiced vs. voiceless) is modified by prosodic strengthening in two different (native vs. non-native) speaker groups. Five native speakers of Canadian English and eight Korean learners of English (intermediate-advanced level) produced 8 minimal pairs with the CVC sequence (e.g., 'beat'-'bit') in varying prosodic contexts. Native speakers distinguished the two vowels in terms of duration, F1, and F2, whereas non-native speakers only showed durational differences. The two groups were similar in that they maximally distinguished the two vowels when the vowels were accented (F2, duration), while neither group showed boundary-induced strengthening in any of the three measurements. The durational differences due to the voicing of the following consonant were also maximized when accented. The results are discussed further in terms of phonetics-prosody interface in L2 production.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 1996.10a
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• pp.198-206
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• 1996

Using eighteen text materials from various goners of present-day Japanese, we collected phonologically reduced forms frequently observed in conversational Japanese, and classified them in search of unified explanation of phonological reduction phenomena. We found 7,516 cases of reduced forms which we divided into 43 categories according to the types of phonological changes they have undergone. The general tendencies ale that deletion and fusion of a phoneme or an entire syllable takes place frequently, resulting in the decrease in the number of syllable. Typical examples frequently observed throughout the materials are : $~/noda/{\rightarrow}~/nda/,{\;}-/teiru/{\rightarrow}~/teru/,{\;}~/dewa/{\rightarrow}~/zja/,{\;}~/tesimau/{\rightarrow}~/cjau/$. From morphosyntactic point of view phonological reduction often occurs at the NP and VP morpheme boundaries. The following findings are drawn from phonological observations of reduction. (1) Vowels are more easily deleted than consonants. (2) Bilabials(/m/, /b/, and /w/ are the most likely candidates for deletion. (3) In a concatenation of vowels, closed vowels are absorbed into open vowels, or two adjacent vowels come to create another vowel, in which case reconstruction of the original sequence is not always predictable. (4) Alveolars are palatalized under the influence of front vowels. (5) Regressive assimilation takes place in a syllable starting with ill, changing the entire syllable into phonological choked sound or a syllabic nasal, depending on the voicing of following phoneme.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2000.07a
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• pp.332-332
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• 2000

The purpose of this study is to investigate the perception and production of English vowels by native speakers of Korean. In perception test, twelve English vowels /${\ae},{\;}a,{\;}{\Game},{\;}e,{\;}{\varepsilon},{\;}i,{\;}I,{\;}a,{\;}o,{\;}u,{\wedge},{\;}{\mho}$/, as in had, hard, hoard, hayed, head, heed, hid, hod, hoed, whod, Hudd, and hood produced by native speakers of English were used as perception test materials and subjects were asked to identify the vowels. Two different groups of subjects participated in the perception test. One consisted of 90 students who were taking an English phonetics course, and the other consisted of 64 who were not. The results showed that the former did better than the latter m identifYing English vowels, and that vowels in 'head' and 'had' were relatively hard to identify, while vowels in 'hayed', 'hard', and unexpectedly, 'heed' and hid' were easy to perceive. In production test, two native English speakers and 4 native Korean speakers served as subjects. The 4 native Korean speakers were divided into two groups as in the perception test, experienced and inexperienced, depending on whether they were taking an English phonetics course or not. Native English speakers generally showed significant differences both in vowel duration and in FI & F2 values between members of the vowel pairs which are of special interest of this study: /i/ vs. /I/, /${\ae}$/ vs. /$\varepsilon$/, and /u/ vs. and /$\mho$/. There was no significant difference between the two Korean groups. Native Korean speakers showed much difference in neither duration nor FI & F2 values except significant durational difference in /i/ vs. /I/ pair.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.229-241
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• 2001

Using eighteen texts from various genera of present-day Japanese, I collected phonologically reduced forms frequently observed in conversational Japanese, and classified them in search of a unified. explanation of phonological phenomena. I found 7,516 cases of reduced forms which I divided into 43 categories according to the types of phonological changes they have undergone. The general tendencies are that deletion and fusion of a phoneme or an entire syllable takes place frequently, resulting in the decrease in the number of syllables. From a morphosyntactic point of view, phonological reduction often occurs at the NP and VP morpheme boundaries. The following findings are drawn from phonetical observations of reduction. (1) Vowels are more easily deleted than consonants. (2) Bilabials ([m], [b], and [w]) are the most likely candidates for deletion. (3) In a concatenation of vowels, closed vowels are absorbed into open vowels, or two adjacent vowels come to create another vowel, in which case reconstruction of the original sequence is not always predictable. (4) Alveolars are palatalized under the influence of front vowels. (5) Regressive assimilation takes place in a syllable starting with [r], changing the entire syllable into a phonological choked sound or a syllabic nasal, depending on the voicing of the following phoneme.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.85-102
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• 2018

This study aims to contrast phonological characteristics of Korean and Turkish in terms of language universality. Considering consonants, both languages have the same number of consonants (21), which is the most typologically plausible structure of consonants. Thus, it can be said that they display high universality in the number of consonants. However, Turkish shows higher universality in regards to their substance, i.e., it differs from Korean when it comes to the structure of plosives and affricates. Turkish has two contrastive consonants, i.e., voiced and voiceless. However, the Korean plosives and affricates consist of neutral, tense and aspirate voiceless. In the case of vowels, both Korean with 10 vowels and Turkish with 8 vowels show lower universality. Yet, all of those vowels belong to the list of the most plausible vowels which makes their universality higher in substance. In respect of the syllable structure, Korean with its (C)V(C) type shows a moderately complex structure while Turkish with its (C)V(C)(C) type has a complex structure. The coda may consist of two consonants in Turkish while only one consonant is possible in Korean. However, onset is composed of one consonant in both languages. The contrastive study of similarities and differences between Korean and Turkish in terms of phonological characteristics will help not only understand the two languages but also provide useful information to increase the efficacy of Korean language education for Turkish learners of Korean, whose number is rapidly increasing.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.93-105
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• 2000

The English schwa sound has special characteristics which are distinct from other vowels. It is non-phonemic and occurs only in an unstressed syllable. Compared with the English schwa, the Korean /e/ is a full vowel which has phonemic contrast. This paper had three aims. One was to see whether there is any relationship between English full vowels and their reduced vowel schwas. Second was to see whether there is any possible target in the English schwa sounds which are derived from different full vowels. The third was to compare the English non-phoneme vowel schwa and the Korean full vowel /e/ in terms of articulatory positions and duration. The study results showed that there is no relationship between each of the full vowels and its schwa. The schwa tended to converge into a possible target which was F1 456 and F2 1560. The Korean vowel /e/ seemed to have its distinct position speaker-individual which is different from the neutral tongue position. The evidence that the Korean /e/ is a back vowel was supported by the Seoul dialect speaker. In duration, the English schwa was much shorter than the full vowels, but there was no significant difference in length between the Korean /e/ and other Korean vowels.

• Journal of Korean language education
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.1-21
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to investigate the aspect of production and perception of Korean vowels /${\Lambda}$/ and /o/ and to discuss the correlation between production and perception of the two vowels. For this purpose, two separate experiments were conducted. 19 Chinese learners and 20 Korean native speakers produced Korean vowels /${\Lambda}$/ and /o/. Production experiments indicated that Koreans and Chinese female groups revealed common features in production, showing that they all pronounced /${\Lambda}$/ and /o/ in a distinguishable manner in the acoustic space. On the other hand, the Chinese male group failed to show that they could pronounce two vowels distinctively. The Chinese male group seemed to be confused in vowel height between the two vowels. A perception experiment was carried out on a continuum consisting of 11 synthesized stimuli. The perceptual judgment from referred Chinese and Korean subjects showed that Koreans and Chinese female groups had the same phonological boundaries (stimulus '04') for the two vowels on the continuum. However, the Chinese male group made perceptual criterion on stimulus '03'. These results confirmed that there was strong correlation between the aspect of production and perception.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.1-13
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• 2019

This study explored the relationship between accurate vowel production and proficiency levels in L2 English produced by Korean EFL adult learners. To this end, nine English vowels /i, ɪ, ɛ, æ, ʌ, ɔ, ɑ, ʊ, u/ were selected and adjacent vowels paired up (e.g., /i/-/ɪ/, /u/-/ʊ/, /ɛ/-/æ/, /ʌ/-/ɔ/, /ɔ/-/ɑ/). The spectral features of the pairs were measured instrumentally, namely F1 (indicating tongue height) and F2 (indicating tongue backness). Meanwhile, the durations as well as spectral features of the tense and lax counterparts in /i/-/ɪ/ and /u/-/ʊ/ were measured, as both temporal and spectral features are important in distinguishing them. The findings of this study confirm that higher-rated speakers were better able to distinguish the contrasts in the front vowel pairs /i/-/ɪ/ and /ɛ/-/æ/ than lower-rated learners, but in the central and back vowel pairs /u/-/ʊ/and /ʌ/-/ɔ/ (though not /ɔ/-/ɑ/), Korean EFL learners generally showed difficulty distinguishing adjacent vowels with spectral cues. On the other hand, the durations of the tense and lax vowels showed that the lower-rated speakers were less able to use the temporal feature to differentiate tense vowels from their lax counterparts, unlike previous studies that found that in general Korean learners depend excessively on the temporal cue to distinguish tense and lax vowels.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.11-17
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• 2022

English vowels play an important role in verbal communication. However, Korean students tend to experience difficulty pronouncing a certain set of vowels despite extensive education in English. The aim of this study is to apply speech recognition software to evaluate Korean students' pronunciation of English vowels in minimal pair words and then to examine acoustic characteristics of the pairs in order to check their pronunciation problems. Thirty female Korean college students participated in the recording. Speech recognition rates were obtained to examine which English vowels were correctly pronounced. To compare and verify the recognition results, such acoustic analyses as the first and second formant trajectories and durations were also collected using Praat. The results showed an overall recognition rate of 54.7%. Some students incorrectly switched the tense and lax counterparts and produced the same vowel sounds for qualitatively different English vowels. From the acoustic analyses of the vowel formant trajectories, some of these vowel pairs were almost overlapped or exhibited slight acoustic differences at the majority of the measurement points. On the other hand, statistical analyses on the first formant trajectories of the three vowel pairs revealed significant differences throughout the measurement points, a finding that requires further investigation. Durational comparisons revealed a consistent pattern among the vowel pairs. The author concludes that speech recognition and analysis software can be useful to diagnose pronunciation problems of English-language learners.

• The Journal of Korean Academy of Prosthodontics
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.77-102
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• 1994

Many studies have been made on the masticatory and esthetic effects of prosthodontic treatments, but few on the restoration of pronunciation, especially in complete denture wearers. The purpose of this study is to provide a basis that could be of help to the complete denture wearers' speech adaptation by analyzing the influence of the palatal coverage upon the duration of consonants and vowels with the method of experimental phonetics. For this study, metal plates and resin plates were made for 3 male subjects in their twenties, who have good occlusion, and do not have speech and hearing disorders. Then 8 Korean consonants and 4 Korean vowels were selected, systemically considering phonetic variants such as the place and manner of articulation, lenis/fortis, mutual effect of each phoneme, etc. They were combined into meaningless tested words in the form of /VCV/, and were included in the carrier sentences. Each informant uttered the sentences 1) without the plate, 2) with the metal plate, 3) with the resin plate. The recorded data were analyzed through the waveform of sounds and spectrogram by using the program SoundEdit, Signalize, Statview 512+for the Macintosh computer. The duration of each segment was measured by searching for the boundaries between the preceding vowels and consonants, and between the consonants and the following vowels. The study led to the conclusion that. 1. With the palatal plate, the duration of all the tested words increased and the duration increased more with the resin plate than with the metal plate. 2. With the palatal plate, the duration of all the preceding vowels, consonants, and following vowels increased, but the temporal structure of the tested words was maintained. 3. As for the manner of articulation, fricative /s/(ㅅ) was greatly influenced by both kinds of palatal plates. 4. As for the place of articulation, alveolar sounds /d/(ㄷ), /n/(ㄴ) were greatly influnced by the kinds of palatal plates, and the velar sounds /n/(ㅇ), /g/(ㄱ) were influenced by the platal plates, but the kind of the palatal plates did not show any significance. 5. As for the lenis/fortis, lenis was influenced more by the kind of the palatal plates. 6. As for the influence of vowels upon each segment in the tested words, palatal vowel /i/(ㅣ) had greater influence than pharyngeal vowel /a/(ㅏ), and following vowels than preceding vowels.