The purpose of this preliminary study on Korean vowel duration was to find how different syllable types and kinds of plosives influence vowel duration. The vowel duration of the Front Mid and Low vowels (/$\varepsilon$/(에), /e/(어), /${\ae}$/(애), /a/(아)) was found to be longer than that of High and Back vowels (/i/(이), /i/(으), /u/(우), /o/(오)). Compared with single vowels (V), Vowels followed by a consonant (CV) were shortened by 79.3% and vowels between consonants (CVC) were shortened by 38.5%, respectively. These results suggest that the influence of consonants upon Korean vowel duration depend on syllble types and the manner or place of articulation.

The author collected and compared midsagittal, coronal, coronal oblique, and transversal images of Korean monophthongs /a, i, e, o, u, i, v/ produced by a healthy male speaker using 1.5 T MR, VISION. Area was measured by computer software after tracing the cross-section at different points along the tract. Results showed that the width of the oral and pharyngeal cavities varied compensatorily from each other on the midsagittal dimension. Formant frequency values estimated from the area functions of the seven vowels showed a strong correlation (r=0.978) with those analyzed from the spoken vowels. Moreover, almost all of 35 students who listened to the synthesized vowels from area data perceived the synthesized vowels as equivalent to the spoken ones. Movement of constriction points of vowel /u/ with wider lip opening sounded /i/ and led to slight changes in vowel quality. Jaw and tongue movement led to major volume variation with an anatomical limitation. Each comer vowel varied systematically from a somewhat constant volume of the average area. Thus, the author proposed that any simulation studies related to vocal tract area variation should reflect its constant volume. The results may be helpful to verify exact measurement of the vocal tract area through vowel synthesis and a simulation study before having any operation of the vocal tract.

In this paper production and perception data were examined to discover what acoustic features are used in distinguishing wh-questions and yes/no-questions. Production data show that the two question types are distinguished by different accentual phrasing, pitch ranges in wh-phrases, and initial lenis stop voicing of the first syllable in verb phrases. Perception data by synthetic intonation show that the two question types are distinguished by the width of pitch ranges between the first and the second syllable in wh-phrases. Initial lenis stop voicing of the first syllable in verb phrases produces a strong effect on the perceptual discrimination of the two question types.

This paper tests whether frication duration plays an important role in perceiving fricatives and affricates. In other words, whether the frication duration is an acoustic cue for distinguishing fricatives from affricates. For this purpose two types of experiments are carried out. In the first experiment two sets of stimuli are created by decreasing the frication duration of fricatives by 10ms, and in the second experiment two steps of stimuli are created by increasing the frication duration of affricates by 10 ms. The results of the present study show that frication duration is the primary acoustic cue in perceiving fricative/affricate distinction in Korean. In addition, the amplitude rise time and burst information appear to play secondary roles in perceiving the distinction by a series of perception tests.

In this article are proposed a theory of the French syllable and a rule of French liaison within the dependency phonology framework. The treatment offered assumes that the notion of 'floating' or 'extrametrical' segment allows for a better description than competing alternatives based on truncation or insertion. This rule was based on the consequences of positing floating segments for the structure of lexical entries and underlying phonological representations. I have described the phenomenon of French liaison and shown that insights normally associated with metrical and 'autosegmental' accounts could naturally be integrated within the syllable structure.

This paper investigates the phatic function of intonation in Russian by recording and analysing 11 female native speakers of standard Moscow Russian. This paper shows that differences in intonation pattern of a sentence are associated with differences in degree of listener's involvement in the speech. Intonation pattern of an utterance having phatic function appears to be determined by 1) the speaker's readiness to talk to evoke the listener's attention ; 2) the speaker's intention to continue the communication. Some emphasis is placed on the relationship between intonation pattern of an utterance and speaker-listener interaction.

This paper aimed at examining the influence of L1 (native language) phonology when speakers of L1 perceive L2 (foreign language) sounds. Korean and Japanese learners of English took a perception test of Australian English words 'work', 'walk' and 'wok'. Based on Korean and Japanese phonology, it was predicted that Korean subjects would face more difficulties than Japanese subjects. The results of the experiment substantiated the influence of L1 phonology in L2 learners' L2 sound perception.

The system proposed in this paper prosodically transcribes the intonation patterns, prosodic structures, phrasings, and other prosodic aspects of Korean utterances, on four parallel tiers: a tone tier, an orthographic tier, a break index tier, and a miscellaneous tier. The tone tier employs two phrase accents (L* and H *), three accentual phrase boundary tones (L-, H-, LH-), and four intonational phrase boundary tones (L%,H%,LH%,LHL%) in order to provide a phonological transcription of pitch events associated with accented syllables and phrase boundaries. The break index tier uses five break indices, numbered from 0 to 4, which mark a prosodic grouping of words and its prosodic structure in an utterance. Among the five indices, the break index 3 and the break index 4 align with an accentual phrase boundary tone and an intonational phrase boundary tone, respectively, in the tone tier.

An Electropalatographic (EPG) study was conducted to investigate the articulatory characteristics which determine the, distinction between the Korean lax fricative [s] and tense fricative [s']. This study also intended to test if an increase in the degree of tensity (lax fricative [s] < tense fricative [s']) induces a decrease in coarticulatory vocalic effects. The results indicated that the increase in the tensity of Korean fricatives is closely related to the increase in the narrowness of the groove width (wider contact at the place of articulation), the forward shifting in the place of articulation, and the longer duration of the constriction (longer maintenance in the manner of articulation). It was also found that coarticulatory vocalic effects on Korean fricatives are affected by Recasens' two rules of constraint (1983) : spatial and temporal constraints.