Acoustic Analysis of Koreans' Production Errors in English - with reference to nasalization and lateralization

한국인 화자의 영어 발음 오류에 관한 음향적 분석 - 비음화와 설측음화를 중심으로 -

This paper examined the acoustic differences in English speech production between English native speakers and Korean learners. Korean speakers seem to produce errors by over-applying the Korean phonological rules(nasalization and lateralization) to English speech under the conditions comparable to those of Korean which contain nasal+lateral or lateral+nasal sequences. Being based on this prediction, the experimental data is grouped into three sets, [n]+[l] sequence, [l]+[n]sequence, and [m]+[l] sequence. The result shows that, Korean speakers usually nasalize or lateralize the target words or phrases in every three categories while English natives don't. In set A([n]+[l] sequence), both nasalization and lateralization were found in [n]+[l] sequence, the same circumstances where both nasalization and lateralization can be placed as in Korean. In the case of set B([l]+[n] sequence), only lateralization is observed. It is because the nasalization never occurs in the sequence of l-n in Korean. There is no lateralization in set C([m]+[l] sequence), because only nasalization occurs in the sequence of m-l in Korean. This results reconfirmed that the nasalization and lateralization rules in Korean deeply influence on the English production data. Korean speakers need to be taught not to over-apply Korean phonological rule to English production for accurate pronunciation.