The Journal of the Korea Contents Association (한국콘텐츠학회논문지)

The Korea Contents Association (한국콘텐츠학회)
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Confusion in the Perception of English Labial Consonants by Korean Learners

한국 학습자들의 영어 순자음 혼동

  • 초미희 (경기대학교 영어영문학부)
  • Published : 2009.01.28
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Abstract

Based on the observation that Korean speakers of English have difficulties in producing English fricatives, a perception experiment was designed to investigate whether Korean speakers also have difficulties perceiving English labial consonants including fricatives. Forty Korean college students were asked to perform a multiple-choice identification test. The consonant perception test consisted of nonce words which contained English labial consonants [p, b, f, v] in 4 different prosodic locations: initial onset position, intervocalic position before stress, intervocalic position after stress, and final coda position. The general perception pattern was that the mean accuracy rates were higher in strong position like CV and VCVV than in weak position like VC and VVCV. The difficulties in perceiving the English targets resulted mainly from bidirectional manner confusion between stop and fricative across all prosodic locations. The other types of misidentification were due to place confusion as well as voicing confusion. Place confusion was generated mostly by the target [f] in all prosodic position due to acoustic properties. Voicing confusion was heavily influenced by prosodic position. The misperception of the participants was accounted for by phonetic properties and/or the participants' native language properties.

영어 마찰음을 발음하기 어려운 점은 잘 알려졌는데, 한국 대학생들이 마찰음을 포함하는 영어 순자음을 인지하는데도 마찬가지로 어려움을 느끼는지 알아보기 위하여 40명의 한국 대학생들을 대상으로 영어 순자음이 들어간 임시어를 4가지 다른 운율적 위치(초성, 종성, 강세 앞 모음사이, 강세 뒤 모음사이)에서 인지하는 테스트를 실행하였다. 실험 참가자들은 초성이나 강세 앞 모음사이처럼 강한 위치의 자음을 종성이나 강세 뒤 모음사이의 약한 위치보다 더 정확하게 판별하는 인지패턴을 보여주었다. 한국 학생들의 인지의 어려움은 모든 운율 위치에서 영어 목표자음의 조음방법 혼동 때문에 대부분 발생하였다. 그밖에, 조음장소와 유무성의 혼동도 일어났는데, 조음장소의 혼동은 모든 운율 위치에서 주로 [f]의 음향적 속성 때문에 일어났으며 유무성의 혼동은 운율 위치의 영향 때문에 발생하였다. 이러한 조음방법, 조음장소, 유무성의 혼동은 목표자음의 음성적 속성 그리고/또는 피실험자의 모국어 속성으로 설명되었다.

Keywords

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