• Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.43-54
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• 2006

The purpose of this study is to examine temporal structures of English words beginning with an /s/ plus stop sequence through production experiments with native speakers of Korean learning English and native speakers of English. According to the results of our production experiment, both a beginner and an advanced group of Korean English learners produced /s/ shorter than a following stop, while the opposite pattern was observed in English native speakers' production. An advanced group of Korean English learners were good at producing a stop after /s/ as unaspirated, but their production of a stop following /s/ was different from English native speakers' production in that the closure duration of the stop was much longer.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.15-22
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• 2011

The purposes of this study are (1) to investigate the correlation between English word-final stop and the duration of vowels before word-final stop and (2) to suggest a way to detect pronunciation errors and teach the pronunciation of English word-final stops. For these purposes, 18 Korean speakers' production was recorded and analysed using Speech Analyzer and their production was compared with that of native English speakers. In addition, two native English speakers evaluated the subjects' pronunciation. The major findings are the voicing dependent effect of the English vowels produced by native Korean speakers is lower than that of native English speakers; Korean speakers release English word-final stops less than native English speakers; and the pronunciation of English word-final stops and the duration of adjacent vowels are closely related in that the pronunciation score of final stops and the ratio of vowels between the vowels before voiced stops and voiceless stops are correlated. In addition, this study concludes with pedagogical suggestions that may be useful for English pronunciation teaching.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.57-62
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• 2003

Using EPG, the stop and fricative portions of the Korean and English afficates were examined to find out whether the stop and fricative portions of Korean affricates are the same as those of English ones in articulation, as generally assumed in the literature. The English affricate in the word 'choose' is classified as alveopalatal just like the Korean affricate in the word 'cam'. The results of the EPG data showed that Korean affricates were not articulated the same as those in English, especially in the stop portion. In English, the stop portion of 'choose' was quite similar to /t/ as 'tooth', but in Korean, the stop portion of 'cam' was somewhat different from /t/ in 'tam'. More specifically, the stop portion of /t/ in 'tam' was articulated with the contact at the upper teeth and the alveolar ridge, but the stop portion of /t/ in 'cam' was articulated with the contact in the alveopalatal region. This shifting in the place of articulation of the stop portions of the Korean affricate (from dental and alveolar to alveopalatal) can be explained. Unlike English affricates, the stop portions of Korean affricates and the fricative portions of Korean affricates are co-articulated at the same place of articulation.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.165-173
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• 2005

This paper investigates the influence of the Korean phonology on the production of English words including a stop plus nasal sequence through production experiments with a beginner and an advanced group of Korean English learners. The results of the production experiments show that both the beginner and the advanced group of Korean English learners were under the influence of the Korean phonological rule realizing a stop as a nasal before a nasal when they pronounced a stop plus nasal sequences in English words. The extent of L1 interference was greater in the beginner group than in the advanced group.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.19-33
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• 2006

This study explores whether Russian, known to have a process of syllable-final devoicing, reveals differences in vowel duration as a function of the underlying voicing of the coda stop. This paper also examines whether non-native speakers of Russian and English learn typical L2 values in vowel duration. The results indicate that vowels in Russian have a slightly longer mean duration before a voiced stop than before a voiceless stop (a mean difference of 9.52 ms), but in most cases the differences did not exhibit statistical significance. In English the mean difference was 60.05 ms, and the differences were in most cases statistically significant. All native Russian speakers of English produced larger absolute differences in vowel duration for English than for Russian, and all native English speakers of Russian produced smaller absolute differences for Russian than for English. More experienced learners seemed to achieve more native-like values of vowel duration than less experienced learners did, suggesting that learning occurs gradually as the learners gain more experience with the L2.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.11-16
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• 2023

The present study examines how a cognitive attention affects Korean learners of English (L2) in perceiving the English stop voicing distinction (/d/-/t/). This study tested the effect of attentional distractor on primary and non-primary acoustic cues, focusing on the role of Voice Onset Time (VOT) and fundamental frequency (F0). Using the dual-task paradigm, 28 Korean adult learners of English participated in the stop identification task carried with (distractor) and without (no-distractor) arithmetic calculation. Results showed that when distracted, Korean learners' sensitivity to VOT decreased as priorly reported with native English speakers. Furthermore, as F0 is a primary cue for a L1 Korean stop laryngeal contrast, its role in L2 English voicing distinction was also affected by a distractor, without compensating for the reduced VOT sensitivity. These findings suggest that flexible use of multiple cues in L1 is not necessarily beneficial for L2 phonological processing when coping with a adverse listening condition.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.3-11
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• 2015

This study compared English and Korean speakers with regard to the nasalization of the English stops /b, d, g, p, t, k/before a nasal within and across a word boundary. Nine English and thirty Korean speakers participated in the experiment. We used 37 speech items with different grammatical structures. Overall the English informants rarely nasalized the stops while the Korean informants generally greatly nasalized them though widely varying from no nasalization to almost complete nasalization. In general, voiced stops were more likely to be nasalized than voiceless stops. Also, the alveolar stops /d, t/tended to be nasalized the most, the bilabial stops /b, p/ the second most, and the velar stops /g, k/ the least. Besides, the closer the grammatical relationship between neighboring words, the more likely the stop nasalization occurred. In contrast, the Korean syllabification - the addition of the vowel /i/ to the final stops - worked against the stop nasalization. On the other hand, different stress (accent) or rhythm effects of the two languages are assumed to contribute to the significantly different nasalization between English and Korean speakers. The spectrum of stop nasalization obtained from this study can be used as an index to measure how close a certain Korean speaker's stop nasalization is to English speakers'.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.31-38
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• 2013

This study investigated the influence of English vowel pronunciation training to English word-initial stop pronunciation. For that purpose, VOT values of English stops produced by twenty Korean English learners(five Youngnam dialect male speakers, five Youngnam dialect female speakers, five Kangwon dialect male speakers, and five Kangwon dialect female speakers) were measured using the Speech Analyzer and their post-training production was compared with their pre-training production. The result shows that post-training VOT values of voiced stops became closer to those of native English speakers in all four groups. Hence, it can be inferred that vowel pronunciation training is effective for correcting pronunciation of voiced vowels by analyzing the change of the quality of following vowels(especially low vowels) and the degree of giving stress.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2000.07a
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• pp.365-365
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• 2000

English segments adopted into Korean can be divided into three types: Some English segments /$m, {\;}n, {\;}{\eta}, {\;}p^h, {\;}t^h, {\;}k^h$/ are adopted into the original sound [$m, {\;}n, {\;}{\eta}, {\;}p^h, {\;}t^h, {\;}k^h$] in Korean. Other segments /b, d, g/ appear in the voiceless stop form [p, t, k]. Generative Phonology explains the presence of the above English segments in Korean but it cannot explain why the English segments /$f, {\;}v, {\;}{\Theta}, {\;}{\breve{z}}, {\;}{\breve{c}}, {\;}{\breve{j}}$/ disappear during the adopting process. I present a set of universal constraints from the Optimality Theory proposed by Prince and Smolensky(l993) and I show how English segments differently adopted into Korean can be explained by these universal constraints such as Faith(feature). N oAffricateStop, Faith(nasal), NoNasalStop, Faith(voice), NoVoicedStop and the interaction of these constraints. I conclude that this Optimality Theory provides insights that better capture the nature of the phonological phenomena of English segments in Korean.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.169-186
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• 2000

This paper aims to confirm the mispronunciation of native Korean students due to the phonetic and phonological system differences between English and Korean, and to find the works-to-do by experiment. Many Korean students tend to differentiate the sounds of word-final stop consonants not by vowel duration or the allophones but by the phoneme of the consonant itself. In English, Stop sounds change through the conditions of the aspirated, unaspirated, or unreleased sounds. But in Korean they are not allophones of phonemes but distinct phonemes. Therefore, many Korean students are apt to add an extra vowel sound /i/ after the final stop consonant in the eve form due to both the unperception of the differences between the phonemes and the allophones of stop consonants, and the influence of the Korean sound-sequence relationship. Since the replacement of the allophones and extra vowel addition does not change the meaning, the importance was almost lost. Nevertheless, this kind of study is essential for the precise learning and the use of the English language.