Characteristics of the Listening and Pronunciation of Korean Obstruents of Chinese Learners -Based on the Phonetic Experiments Using Kalvin and Praat-

중국인 학습자의 한국어 장애음 청취와 조음 특성 - Kalvin과 Praat을 활용한 음성 실험을 바탕으로 -

  • Received : 2012.05.18
  • Accepted : 2012.06.15
  • Published : 2012.06.30

Abstract

Characteristics of the Listening and Pronunciation of Korean Obstruents of Chinese Learners -Based on the Phonetic Experiments Using Kalvin and Praat- This study aims at investigating the characteristics of confrontation in three ways, lax/ fortis/ aspirated consonants, in Korean obstruents through experimental phonetic analysis for the Chinese Korean language learners. On one hand, as a result of comparing Korean and Chinese obstruent systems, there is no big difference regarding the articulatory location. On the other hand, in regards to the articulatory method there is a difference. In a Korean obstruent system, the confrontation presented in three ways by the strength of aspiration. On the contrary, the Chinese obstruent system showed confrontation in two ways by the existence of aspiration. To examine the difficulty of the learners caused by the above-mentioned reason objectively, this paper studied the relationship between input and output of sound through the experimental phonetic analysis such as Kalvin and Praat. To research the input of sound, the listening ability of the learners was examined by 'Choosing Consonant' among the Menu of Kalvin. As a result of that experiment, many errors were shown. They recognized the fortis as lax in the area of affricates and plosives. In the area of fricatives, they recognized affricatives as fricatives. To investigate the output of sound, the section of aspiration and the section of friction of a plosive, an affricate and a fricative in Praat, were expressed numerically. The learners' VOT of lax and affricate represented that lax was pronounced close to the fortis, and the VOT of fricatives was not shown the section of aspiration and friction clearly, and also the result showed that they pronounced a fricative like affricative-aspirated one. The result shows that the learners' pronunciation is related to the listening ability. The consequence is caused by the characteristics of the difference between Korean obstruents and Chinese ones. If the training pronunciation is conducted based on above result, it would be a better methodology in teaching Korean.

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