Proceedings of the KSPS conference (대한음성학회:학술대회논문집)
The Korean Society Of Phonetic Sciences And Speech Technology
- Semi Annual
Domain
- Linguistics > Linguistics, General
2000.07a
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It is a great honour for me to speak to you today on the Korean's problems in learning English pronunciation. First of all I would like to thank Prof. H. B. Lee, President of the Phonetic Society of Korea for calling upon me to make a keynote speech at this International Conference on Phonetic Sciences. The year before last when the 1 st Joint Summit on English Phonetics was held at Aichi Gakuin University in Japan, the warm hospitality given to me and my colleagues by the English Phonetic Society of Japan was so great that I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to the members of the English Phonetic Society of Japan and especially to Prof. Masaki Tsuzuki, President of the Society. Korean learners of English have a lot of problems in learning English pronunciation. Some vowel problems seem to be shared by Japanese learners but other problems, especially in consonants, are peculiar to Koreans owing to the nature of phonological rules peculiar to the Korean language. Of course, there are other important problems like speech rhythm and intonation besides vowels and consonants. But they will not be included here because of limited time.
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Recently speech technologies have shown notable advancements and they now play major roles in computer-aided language learning systems. In the current paper, use of speech recognition technologies is viewed with our system for teaching English pronunciation to Japanese speakers.
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Koreans' interest in and concern with learning English are at the peak as more actions and transactions in our daily life are carried out in English. Even though we are experiencing a big transition from a conventional grammar-translation method to communicative language teaching, little efforts have been made to set the new goals and objectives, norms and standards, and to develop new instructional methods for teaching pronunciation for international communication. This lecture will introduce a new approach of teaching English pronunciation for international communication, suggesting how to implement it to Korean ELT classrooms. It will also address the necessity of research on Korean learners of English, focusing on their perception and production of English sounds for international intelligibility and identity,
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For the learners of English as a foreign language, oral repetition of model sentences is an e essential practice to improve their listening and speaking abilities of English. Skill training of both speech perception and production is involved in this practice. This paper reports on an observation of production e
$\pi$ ors in such practice made by Japanese college students in my class. The teaching material used is intended for acquainting the learners with basic English rhythm and intonation p patterns. The students were required to repeat each sentence in a series of conversations after a model reading. Although the vocabulary and expressions were rather limited, I monitored different kinds of errors in their repetition. Putting aside intonation, their difficulties are classified into five types; 1. Omission of words or morphemes, 2. Addition of unnecessary words or morphemes, 3. Replacement of words, 4. Japanization of English sounds, 5. Wrong rhythm caused by improper stress assignment. Accurate listening, especially to weakly stressed syllables and to assimilated sounds, as has often been pointed out, is the most difficult part in perception for them. Japanese sound system interferes in production of English sounds. More often than not their knowledge of grammar or the context does not work at all to guess the words they are hearing -
Koreans and English have different phonotactic constraints and phonological rules. It causes Korean learners to have difficulty in pronouncing certain English consonant clusters correctly. This paper aims to discuss what English consonant clusters are difficult for Korean learners to learn and why this difficulty arises by comparing phonotactic constraints and phonological rules of English and Korean.
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In this paper, we discuss why two different surface forms appear in loanwords for English and German /
${\int}$ / In Korean, a vowel is inserted into loanwords if a consonant cannot be properly syllabified. Therefore, /${\int}$ / in some positions of loanwords trigger vowel insertion. Interestingly, /${\int}$ /s in the onset cluster of English and German words were borrowed in Korean as Iful with the inserted vowel [u] whereas If Is in the coda position of English and German words were borrowed as Ifil with the inserted vowel [i]. For example, 'shrimp' is adopted as [${\int}urimphi$ ] whereas 'rush' is adopted as [$ra{\int}i$ ]. In this paper, we attempt to find out the phonetic reason for the distribution of the surface forms of /${\int}$ /. We assume that since the formant frequency of [i] is higher than that of [u], the peak frequency of /${\int}$ / with the surface form of [${\int}$ i] in loanwords may be higher than that of /${\int}$ / with the surface form of [${\int}u$ ]. We also assume that duration may be another factor for the distribution of [${\int}i$ ] and [${\int}u$ ]. Since /${\int}$ / and /u/ use lip rounding whereas /i/ doesn't, the duration for [${\int}i$ ] might be longer than that of [${\int}u$ ]. German supports our assumption. /${\int}$ / in the onset cluster is longer than /${\int}$ / in the coda position. It also has higher peak frequency than that of /${\int}$ / in the coda position. In loanwords,${\int}$ in the onset cluster is borrowed as [${\int}u$ ] as in Spiegel whereas /${\int}$ / in the coda position is borrowed as [${\int}i$ ] as in Bosch. English, however, does not support our assumption. Peak frequency of [${\int}$ ] depends on the preceding vowel, not on its position in the syllable structure. If the preceding vowel is front, then the peak freuency of the following of the following /${\int}$ / is high but if the preceding vowel is back, than the peak frequency of the following /${\int}$ / is low. The peak frequency of /${\int}$ / in the onset cluster seems to be in between. As we assumed, however, the duration of /${\int}$ / in the coda position is longer than of /${\int}$ / in the onset cluster. With the mixed results, we question whether Koreans really hear two different xounds for /${\int}$ / in English words. For the future experiment, we would like to perform the perception tet for /${\int}$ / in English words. -
This paper attempts to investigate characteristic features of Japanese EFL learners' English intonation and how their Japanese accents are affecting their English intonation, focusing on a comparison between the accent patterns of Japanese compounds and the stress patterns of English compounds. It is based on research dedicated to helping to improve the teaching and learning of English intonation (prosody) for Japanese EFL learners. It examines the Fundamental Frequency (henceforth Fx) contours of two EFL college students, one specializing in English and the other in Japanese. Both of them may be considered upper intermediate EFL students with their TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) scores ranging between 500 and 550.
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The Bodysonic system was invented on the basis of 'Bone Conduction Theory,' which states that people feel sounds with their whole body. The Bodysonic system is used for L2 (English) learning at Aichi Women's Junior College. In recent years we have developed some unique methodology related to use of the Bodysonic system. In Japan it is difficult for adult L2 learners to acquire the prosody of a foreign language. A language laboratory using the Bodysonic system has been suggested as one way to eradicate such adult L2 problems. The Bodysonic system changes sounds into vibrations. It makes it easy for learners to acquire the prosody of a foreign language because humans can convey information, through their tactile organs. In addition, this system was originally designed to make people relax, so it can also help minimize learner anxiety. The effect of Bodysonic vibrations on language learning has already been proven by some experiments. The Bodysonic system appears to be an ideal teaching method for adult to learn a foreign language.
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How to teach intelligible, communicative pronunciation is a continuous question in the English education. Without good input, we can not expect good output. However, in EFL situation, it is very difficult to input the good English pronunciation, therefore, we have to find out the efficient and effective material for teaching pronunciation. One of the materials is song, because songs contain the linguistic and cultural traits of the language. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the reason why songs are good for teaching pronunciation. Koreans, who are syllable timed language users, have difficulties in English pronunciation of stress, rhythm, consonants cluster, linking or blending in connected speech. The 134 songs from wee sing are analyzed for how these traits show in songs. The result shows that we can acquire the traits easily and naturally through songs. And a lesson plan is offered as an example for teaching songs.
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Kim, Key-Seop(2000). English Restructuring and A Use of Music in Teaching English Pronunciation. JSEP 2000 voU This study has two-fold aims: one is to clarify the restructuring of English in utterance, and the other is to relate it to teaching English pronunciation for listening and speaking with a use of music and song by suggesting a model of 10-15 minute pronunciation class syllabus for every period in class. Generally, English utterances are restructured by stress-timed rhythm, irrespective of syntactic boundaries. So the rhythmic units are arranged in isochronous groups, of which the making is to attach clitic(s) to a host or head often leftwards and sometimes rightwards, which results in linking, contraction, reduction, sound change and rhythm adjustment in utterance, just as in music and song. With English restructuring focused on, a model of English pronunciation class syllabus is proposed to be put forward in class for every period of a lesson or unit. It tries to relate the focused factor(s) in pronunciation to the integrated, with teaching techniques and music made use of.
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This paper reports the results of an experimental phonetic study of intonation contrasts perception by speakers of British English, Japanese and Russian. Six series of re-synthesized two-syllable rise-fall contours with manipulated parameters of the rise in the first and the fall in the second syllable were employed in the experiment. Modifications of pitch height were executed in 2 st steps, and of duration - in 30ms steps. The subjects, who were native speakers of British English, Japanese and Russian, identified the sentence type of presented re-synthesized stimuli. The results of the experiments demonstrate overall similarity of the perception strategies across the three groups of subjects, especially regarding the thresholds of 'declarative' sentence type judgement. Non-declarative judgements are more language-specific. The results can be employed for the teaching of English, Japanese and Russian as foreign languages as well as for speech synthesis and recognition.
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It is generally said that falling intonation is used at the end of a declarative sentence. However, this is not the case with all stretches of spontaneous speech which are marked in transcription as sentences. The present paper examines intonation patterns appearing at the end of declarative sentences in oral presentations, and discusses instances where falling intonation does not appear. The texts used for analysis are eight oral presentations collected at international conferences in the field of physics. Quantitative and qualitative analyses are carried out. Three major factors related to discourse structure have been found for nonoccurrence of falling intonation at sentence boundaries.
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In the phoneme level, English stop sounds are classified with the feature of 'voicing': voiceless and voiced (p/b, t/d, k/g). But when realized, a voiceless stop is not alwats the same sound. For example, the two 'p' sounds in 'people' are different. The former is pronounced with much aspiration, while the latter without it. This allophonic differnece between [
$P^h$ ] and [p] out of an English phoneme /p/ can be well explained to Koreans because in Korean these two sounds exist as two different phonemes {/ㅍ/ and /ㅃ/ respectively). But difficulties lie in teaching the English voiced stop sounds (/b, d, g/) to Koreans because in Korean voiced stops do not exist as phonemes but as allophones of lenis sounds (/ㅂ, ㄷ, ㄱ/). For example, the narrow transcription of '바보' (a fool) is [baboo]. In the word initial position, Korean lenis stops are pronounced voiceless and even with a slight aspiration while in the inrervocalic environments they become voiced, That is in Korean voiced stops do not occur independently and neither they have their own letters. To explain all these more effectively to Koreans, it is very helpful to use Korean Phenetic Alphabet (KPA) which is devised by Dr. LEE Hyunbok (a professor of phonetics at Seoul National Univ. and chairman of Phonetic Society of Koera.)(omitted) -
The purpose of this study was to create letters for of nonliterary Pulang tribe in Thailand those who immigrant from China. illiterate Pulang tribe hand down their tradition by primary oral culture therefore their tradition can't initiate and keep, moreover, it may disappear throughout history. So it is expected to crusade against unlettered people. The scheme of research adopted in this study was a minority race who habitate at the northern Machan, Chiangrai in Thailand. It is not only analysis of language but also the eradication of literacy and the research based on linguistic, ethnolinguistic, and primary oral culture. Five Pulang people who live in that area were chosen for creating letters. By using the I. P. A., after each word was listen to their pronunciation one by one it was described and repeated this process several times; the material words and humanbody were pointed in front of them while other words were described by gesture. For final description, number of people were in the lineup for listening the sound of words and phrases to sentences. In the first stage, it was an analysis segmental of Pulang: vocoid, contoid and diphthong were described with each sample syllables and words. The suprasegmental were studied with intonation and juncture of the words in the second stage. Two words were compared and different meanings within their intonation and juncture were shown. At the end of this part, each case of phonemic or morphophonemics representation described the juncture in the words. In the third stage, minimal pairs were analyzed with vowels and consonants and described in free variation based on words. In the last stage, syllable structure in open syllable and closed syllable was studied and then each syllable of its structure was analyzed with samples. There were thirty-two phonemes in apong Pulang as follows: seven vocoids; a, i, e, o, u,
${\ae}$ , and$\wedge$ , one diphthong; wu, 24 contoids; b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, k, 1, m, n,${\eta}, {\;}p^{h}$ , p, p, r, s, s, sh, t, t, w, and y. Their pronunciations of p, s, d,$p^{h}$ , j, and t are frequently used in speech and are unique in triphthong. Moreover, most of the words used initial and final consonant cluster. -
This paper IS concerned with adults' foreign language aquisition and intends to research the relationship between the mother tongue's phonetic system (L1) and the perception of the foreign language (L2), in this paper Polish and Korean. The questions that are to help to define the aforementioned relationship are I) how Polish perceive Korean vowels, 2) how Koreans perceive Polish vowels, and 3) how Koreans perceive Korean vowels pronounced by Poles. In order to identify L2's vowels, the listeners try to fit them into the categories of their own language (L1). On the one hand, vowels that are the same in both languages and those that are articulated where no other vowel is articulated, have the best rate of recognition. For example, /i/ in both languages is a front close vowel and in both languages there are no other front close vowels. Therefore, vowels /i/ (and /a/) have the best rate of recognition in all three experiments. On the other hand, vowels that are unfamiliar to the listeners do not seem to have the worst rate of recognition. The vowels that have the worst rate of recognition are those, that are similar, but not quite the same as those of L1. This research proves that "equivalence classification prevents L2 learners from producing similar L2 phones, but not new L2 phones, authentically" (Flege, 1987). Polish speakers can pronounce unfamiliar L2 vowels "more authentically" than those similar to L1 vowels. However, the difference is not significant and this subject requires further research (different data, more informants).
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$t{\partial}n$ /, /$d{\partial}n$ /, /$t{\partial}l$ / and /d{\partial}l$/, on the one hand, are the typical phonemes of syllabic consonants. On the other hand, /${\int}{\partial}n$ / most plausibly gives rise to the syllabic consonants. /$t{\partial}r$ / and /$d{\partial}r/ can he syllabic. However, because lip-rounded consonants strengthen the character of consonantal phonemes, they are not so appropriate. Apart from phonemes, some familiar words also could be almost always syllabic. From the historical perspective, we can say that the position of syllabic consonants is typically the second syllables of two-syllabic words and 1.hat the underlying schwa does not always exist. In terms of the syllable structure, the syllables which include syllabic consonants are totally different from both stressed syllables and the other unstressed syllables. -
Korean stops are 3 system: aspirated, fortis, lenis, whereas English stops are 2 system: voiced, voiceless. Because in Korean, lenis stop is realized by slight aspirated voiceless stop, it is likely to produce English word initial voiced stop as voiceless stop. We divide subjects into three group-native, experienced, unexperienced- and investigate differences between group. VOT of experienced group IS same as native group, but VOT of unexperienced group is longer than native group. VOt of unexperienced group is 1.8 times than native group. We survey whether the height of following vowel influences VOT of initial stop. As a result, for all group, VOT followed by low vowel is shorter than VOT followed by high vowel. But this tendency is more salient in unexperienced group. For high vowel, VOT of unexperienced group is 2.05 times than native group, whereas for low vowel, it is just 1.55 times. The unexperienced pronounce well English word initial voiced stop followed by low vowel than high vowel. Samples are divided into two group according to type of coda consonant- nasal and voiceless stop. But average of VOT is similar and there is no significant difference between two groups. There is no influence by type of coda consonant. The average of phrases is compared to the average of isolated words. In the case of natives and experienced, there is no significant differences between phrases and words, but in the case of unexperienced, VOT of phrases becomes shorter than words. But VOT of unexperienced is still longer than native group.
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In this paper, we examine fO peak lagging phenomenon in English. FO peak lagging refers to the fact that fO peak corresponding to an accent is realized beyond the domain of the host syllable. We present experimental data of fO peak lagging, which shows that fO peak is heavily delayed when the duration of the accented syllable is relatively short. In addition, we show that fO peak is also heavily delayed and realized in the following syllable in a focused word, even where the target vowel is not intrinsically short.
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This paper focuses on how and where to set learner goals in English phonetic education in Japan, especially at the threshold level, and on what components are necessary to achieve them both from practical and theoretical perspectives. It first describes some issues mainly through the speaker's own teaching plan and a literature review of various researchers such as Morley (1991), Kajima (1989), Porcaro (1999), Matsul (1996), Lambacher (1995, 1996), Dalton and Seidlhofer (1994), and Murphy (1991). By comparing and analyzing these and other researchers, the speaker tries to set and elucidate reasonable and achievable goals for students to attain intelligibility for comprehensible communicative output. The paper then suggests detailed components that form an essential part of desirable pronunciation teaching plan in order to realize a well-balanced curriculum between segmental and suprasegmental aspects.
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In the age of global communication, more human exchange is extended at the grass-roots level. In the old days, language policy and language planning was based on one nation-state with one language. But high waves of globalizaiton have allowed extended human flow of exchange beyond one's national border on a daily basis. Under such circumstances, homogeneity in Japan may not allow Japanese to speak and communicate only in Japanese and only with Japanese people. In Japan, an advisory report was made to the Ministry of Education in June 1996 about what education should be like in the 21st century. In this report, an introduction of English at public elementary schools was for the first time made. A basic policy of English instruction at the elementary school level was revealed. With this concept, English instruction is not required at the elementary school level but each school has their own choice of introducing English as their curriculum starting April 2002. As Baker, Colin (1996) indicates the age of three as being the threshold diving a child becoming bilingual naturally or by formal instruction. Threre is a movement towards making second language acquisition more naturalistic in an educational setting, developing communicative competence in a more or less formal way. From the lesson of the Canadian immersion success, Genesee (1987) stresses the importance of early language instruction. It is clear that from a psycho-linguistic perspective, most children acquire basic communication skills in their first language apparently effortlessly and without systematic and formal instruction during the first six or seven years of life. This innate capacity diminishes with age, thereby making language learning increasingly difficult. The author, being a returnee, experienced considerable difficulty acquiring L2, and especially achieving native-like competence. There will be many hurdles to conquer until Japanese students are able to reach at least a communicative level in English. It has been mentioned that English is not taught to clear the college entrance examination, but to communicate. However, Japanese college entrance examination still makes students focus more on the grammar-translation method. This is expected to shift to a more communication stressed approach. Japan does not have to aim at becoming an official bilingual country, but at least communicative English should be taught at every level in school Mito College is a small two-year co-ed college in Japan. Students at Mito College are basically notgood at English. It has only one department for business and economics, and English is required for all freshmen. It is necessary for me to make my classes enjoyable and attractive so that students can at least get motivated to learn English. My major target is communicative English so that students may be prepared to use English in various business settings. As an experiment to introduce more communicative English, the author has made the following syllabus design. This program aims at training students speak and enjoy English. 90-minute class (only 190-minute session per week is most common in Japanese colleges) is divided into two: The first half is to train students orally using Graded Direct Method. The latter half uses different materials each time so that students can learn and enjoy English culture and language simultaneously. There are no quizes or examinations in my one-academic year program. However, all students are required to make an original English poem by the end of the spring semester. 2-6 students work together in a group on one poem. Students coming to Mito College, Japan have one of the lowest English levels in all of Japan. However, an attached example of one poem made by a group shows that students can improve their creativity as long as they are kept encouraged. At the end of the fall semester, all students are then required individually to make a 3-minute original English speech. An example of that speech contest will be presented at the Convention in Seoul.
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The past decade has witnessed the abundant use of computer in testing language skills such as listening and reading. Compared with these language skills, we have experienced little use of computer in testing a speaking skill including pronunciation. This is largely due to limitations of the current computer technology. One of such limitations for testing pronunciation is to store and automatically evaluate what the learner utters. Due to this limitation, the computer simply stores what the learner utters and raters evaluate it afterward on a certain rating continuum. With the advent of voice recognition technology, however, the computer has been able to test pronunciation in a systematic way. This technology enables the computer to identify, visually show, and evaluate the learner's intonation pattern by means of autocorrection. The evaluation is expressed in terms of the degree in which the learner's intonation pattern overlaps with that of the native speaker of the target language. In particular, the degree is numerically displayed on the screen, and this numeral is considered as the score of the learner's utterance under our testing framework.
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Because the accuracy is essential, in order to get the fluency in speaking, both of them are very important in English education and in-service training programs. To get the accuracy and the fluency, the causes and phenomena of the unnatural pronunciation have to be surveyed first of all. Therefore, this article surveyed the problematic and unnatural pronunciation of Korean English teachers in elementary and secondary schools using CSL and Multi-speech. And also, tried to pinpoint what the causes of unnatural pronunciation are\ulcorner Next a procedure or steps were offered for them to speak naturally through in-service training programs. Through this analysis, it was found that elementary teachers have unnatural pronunciation below, within and beyond word level, and the secondary teacher has unnatural pronunciation within and beyond word level. Therefore, pronunciation training courses have to put emphasis on segment features first, and move to suprasegmental features for elementary teachers. For secondary teachers, pronunciation training courses have to focus on word level and move to suprasegmental features, in other words beyond word level. And these pronunciation training courses have to be run integrated.
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The aim of this presentation is to suggest a method of integrating the teaching of pronunciation into a typical communicative classroom and on the web. This presentation seeks the way by analyzing useful communicative expressions with a speech analyzer for English learners to see the sound pattern of those expressions and say them right. It is hoped that this presentation will prompt teachers to understand the current role of pronunciation in communicative English programs and that the WWW can help students improve their pronunciation to develop their speaking and listening skills. It also suggests the need for a database of visualized communicative expressions.
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This paper is intended to suggest how to improve Korean high school students' awareness of the pronunciation in order to foster communicative effectiveness. Initially it is focused on the tasks of listening to the suprasegmental aspects. The strategies used in the listening process are (1)discerning intonation units, (2)recognizing rhythm pattern, and (3)identifying contraction and linking in connected speech. The tasks including in each process are listening discrimination, guided practice activity, and listening and speaking activity. The teacher should avoid methods which yield discouraging outcomes and try to help students enjoy experience of success in doing exercises and activities. So I suggested: students put the slash on the pause perceptible to chunk the stream of speech into the intonation units, and mark the content words to internalize English rhythm. And then I suggested that students listen to pop song English in order to improve the awareness of function words and connected speech in the intonation unit.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of reaction signals by Japanese and English speakers. After collecting data from Japanese and English speakers, American and British, I checked them and decided to be concerned with five of them: ah, eh, oh, m, and
${\partial}:m$ . At first I thought that the first three of them resembled in form and in their tones and meanings, while the others occur frequently only in English. But as I was reading the data more in detail I found the reason for too frequent use of the signal eh by Japanese. It is also found that the signal eh is a kind of substitute for a real word, the similar linguistic phenomenon is seen in the use of m, and m seems to be different from${\partial}:m$ in its function, according to whether the speaker is talkative or not. And American students learning Japanese started their Japanese with an English reaction signal and the reverse phenomenon was found with Japanese students speaking in English, so much so that reaction signals are used spontaneously, though they have various tones and meanings. -
This presentation aims to explore some possibility of non-segmental phonetics usually ignored in phonetics education. In pedagogical phonetics, especially ESL/EFL oriented phonetics speech sounds tend to be classified in two criteria 1) 'pronunciation' which deals with segments and 2) 'prosody' or 'suprasegmentals', a criterion that deals with non-segmental elements such as stress and intonation. However, speech involves more dynamic processing. It is non-linear and multi-dimensional in spite of the linear sequence of symbols in phonetic/phonological transcriptions. No word is without pitch or voice quality apart from segmental characteristics whether it is spoken in isolation or cut out from continuous speech. This simply tells the dichotomy of pronunciation and prosody is merely a useful convention. There exists some room to consider dynamic non-segmental phonetics. Examples of non-segmental phonetic investigation, some of the analyses conducted within the frame of Firthian Prosodic Analysis, especially of the relation between vowel variants and foot types, are examined and we see what kind of auditory phonetic training is required to understand impressionistic transcriptions which lie behind the non-segmental phonetics.
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This paper deals with non-rhoticity of Korean and Cantonese in English loanword adaptation. These two languages have quite different cultural and historical backgrounds with respect to English. The influence of the American accent prevails in Korea while in Cantonese the influence is British. However, the treatment of coda-/r/ from English illustrates that both languages are the same in that they use a non-rhotic accent. The main point of this paper is to show that the non-rhoticity of these two languages must be accounted for by their native phonological systems rather than extralinguistic factors such as historical, social and / or cultural backgrounds.
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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. -
Pronunciation teaching is once again coming into the foreground of ELT. Japan is, however, lagging far behind many countries in the development of pronunciation curricula and in the actual speech performance of the Japanese learners of English. The reasons for this can be found in the prevalence of communicative methodologies unfavorable for pronunciation teaching, in the lack of trained professionals, and in the large numbers of students in Japanese foreign language classes. This paper offers a way to promote foreign language pronunciation teaching in Japan and other countries by means of employing computer and internet facilities. The paper outlines the major directions of using modem speech technologies in pronunciation classes, like EVF (electronic visual feedback) training at segmental and prosodic levels; automated error detection, testing, grading and fluency assessment. The author discusses the applicability of some specific software packages (CSLU, SUGIspeech, Multispeech, Wavesurfer, etc.) for the needs of pronunciation teaching. Finally, the author talks about the globalization of pronunciation education via internet resources, such as computer corpora and speech and pronunciation training related web pages.
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The consonant system of English is relatively uniform throughout the English-speaking countries. Accents of English are mainly known to differ in terms of their vowel systems as well as in the phonetic realisations of vowel phonemes. The results of an acoustic study of vowel phonology of Japanese English, Singapore English and Indian English are presented, and an attempt is then made to compare the vowel phonology of these non-native varieties with that of Scottish English and RP. Various native varieties of English are thus shown to differ from each other in major ways, as much, perhaps, as the non-native varieties differ from the native varieties. Nevertheless, native speakers of English appear to be mutually intelligible to a degree that does not extend to non-native varieties. Obviously there are features that various native accents have in common which facilitate their mutual intelligibility, and these features are not shared by non-native accents. It is proposed that the foreign learner adopt certain core features of English in his pronunciation if he is to use English effectively as an international language. The common core that is significant in the communication process will be discussed. In conclusion, some pragmatic implications for the English language education in the new millennium will be articulated.
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It has been widely discussed in phonology that syllable structure of mother tongue influences one's acquisition of foreign language. However, the topic was hardly examined experimentally. So, we investigated effects of Korean syllable structure when Korean speakers pronounce English words, especially focusing on consonant strings that are not allowed in Korean. In the experiment, all the subjects are divided into 3 groups, that is, native, experienced, and inexperienced speakers. Native group consists of 1 male English native speaker. Experienced and inexperienced are each composed of 3 male Korean speakers. These 2 groups are divided by the length of residence in the country using English as a native language. 41 mono-syllable words are prepared considering the position (onset vs. coda), characteristic (stops, affricates, fricatives), and number of consonant. Then, the length of the consonant cluster is measured. To eliminate tempo effect, the measured length is normalized using the length of the word 'say' in the carrier sentence. Measurement of consonant cluster is the relative time period between the initiation of energy (onset I coda) which is acoustically representative of noise (consonant portion) and voicing. bar (vowel portion) in a syllable. Statistical method is used to estimate the differences among 3 groups. For each word, analysis of variance (ANDY A) and Post Hoc tests are carried out.
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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. -
Thie aim of this paper is to assess the Japanese students' listening ability to distinguish English sounds by using the modified version of the English Auditory discrimination Test which was devised by the author in 19998.