• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.23-40
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• 2007

This paper discusses why Korean speakers have problems in pronouncing some medial sonorant clusters in English. We argue that the main reasons lie in the sonority sequence requirement difference between the two languages. English does not have any specific sonority sequence preference between the medial sonorant sequences while Korean has a strict requirement between the two sonorants over a syllable boundary. This sonority sequence requirement difference between the two languages acts as an interference for Korean speakers in learning English pronunciation. This barrier for Korean speakers in acquiring correct pronunciation is implemented in a constraint ranking difference in the Optimality Theory, which is not familiar for Korean speakers. Understanding the details of sonorant production mechanisms along with the different constraint ranking will facilitate the learning process of Korean speakers learning English.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.49-56
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• 2011

This study investigates how American English high back vowels are identified. American English and Korean speakers participated in a phonetic experiment for this study. This study shows their response times of the vowels and discusses how the speakers identified them. For the experiment I used a synthesized vowel continuum between American English /u/ and /$\mho$/based on American English male speakers' voice obtained by Peterson and Barney (1952). I manipulated spectral steps and vowel duration of the stimuli. The statistical results showed that American English speakers were not able to distinguish the stimuli based on spectral quality. Instead they relied on vowel duration. This suggests that the American English high back vowels have changed since Peterson and Barney recorded them in 1952. The Korean speakers also relied on vowel duration, not spectral quality since they could not distinguish them. American speakers' response times of these vowels were not affected by both spectral quality and vowel duration. Koreans' response times were affected by vowel durations only.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.3-10
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• 2013

This study investigated the rhythmic accommodation of Korean English learners' interlanguage talk. Twelve Korean speakers, 6 native English speakers and 6 non-native English speakers in London participated in multiple conversations on different topics which produced 36 conversational data in interlanguage talk (ILT) settings. 190 utterances from the 36 conversational data were analyzed to investigate the rhythmic patterns of Korean English learners when they communicated with English speakers with different language backgrounds. Save for the final-syllable, the normalized duration of consecutive syllables was compared in order to derive a variability index (VI). It was found that there was no significant variability in the measurement of the syllable-to-syllable duration for the utterances of Korean English learners, regardless of their interlocutor's language background. Conversely, it was found that there was evidence that Korean English learners showed rhythmic accommodation in ILT when they conversed with non-native English speakers. The speaking rate became significantly slower when Korean English learners talked to non-native English speakers, than when they talked to other Korean English learners. Furthermore, there was a negative correlation between speaking rate and the VI in the utterances of Korean English learners in ILT.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.24 no.10
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• pp.43-52
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• 2024

A medium scale Urdu speakers' and English speakers' database with multiple accents and dialects has been developed to use in Urdu Speaker Verification Systems, English Speaker Verification Systems, accents and dialect verification systems. Urdu is the national language of Pakistan and English is the official language. Majority of the people are non-native Urdu speakers and non-native English in all regions of Pakistan in general and Gilgit-Baltistan region in particular. In order to design Urdu and English speaker verification systems for security applications in general and telephone banking in particular, two databases has been designed one for foreign accent of Urdu and another for foreign accent of English language. For the design of databases, voice data is collected from 180 speakers from GB region of Pakistan who could speak Urdu as well as English. The speakers include both genders (males and females) with different age groups ranging from 18 to 69 years. Finally, using a subset of the data, Multilayer Perceptron based speaker verification system has been designed. The designed system achieved overall accuracy rate of 83.4091% for English dataset and 80.0454% for Urdu dataset. It shows slight differences (4.0% with English and 7.4% with Urdu) in recognition accuracy if compared with the recently proposed multilayer perceptron (MLP) based SIS achieved 87.5% recognition accuracy

• Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.175-183
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• 2005

In this study, realization of strong and weak syllables in English by Korean leaners with low English proficiency was examined through experiment. The aspects of three acoustic characteristics-duration, pitch, amplitude-were measured and compared with native speakers of English. It was assumed that production of duration, pitch and amplitude of strong and weak syllable by Korean learners would be different from that of English native speakers. According to the production experiments, English native speakers produced strong syllable longer, higher and louder than weak syllable. However, Korean leaners produced strong syllable higher and louder than weak syllable, but not longer enough. Specifically, weak syllable by Korean leaners was longer and strong syllable shorter than native speakers. Furthermore, the difference in duration of syllables between Korean leaners and English native speakers is more significant than pitch and amplitude. As a result, the duration was more important cue for the realization of stress than pitch and amplitude. However, Korean leaners did not produce duration of stressed syllables as English native speakers did, even though they produce the pitch and amplitude of stressed syllable in a similar way to native speakers. The reasons for those were considered, too.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.97-112
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• 2000

This study examines how both English native speakers and Korean speakers realize the intonational tunes of English sentences when a sentence has two different meanings, through comparison of the utterances of the two groups of speakers. The results indicate that the English native speakers realize the difference in the meanings of given sentences in terms of differences in the boundary tones, as predicted in Pierrehumbert(1980) and Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg(l990), according to whom intonation is composed of a series of pitch accents, phrase tones, and boundary tones, and the meaning of a given sentence is delivered by the composition of the individual meanings of each component. The Korean speakers, however, fail to realize the difference in meaning with its boundary tones. Rather, they realize it by the number or positions of pitch accents and paralinguistic cues such as emotions and gestures. The Korean speakers, unlike the Americans, emphasize subject in sentences.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.77-88
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• 2011

Foreign accent in second language production depends heavily on the transfer of features from the first language. This study examines acoustic variations in segments and suprasegments by native and nonnative speakers of English, searching for patterns of the transfer and plausible indexes of foreign accent in English. The acoustic variations are analyzed with recorded read speech by 20 native English speakers and 50 Korean learners of English, in terms of vowel formants, vowel duration, and syllabic variation induced by stress. The results show that the acoustic measurements of vowel formants and vowel and syllable durations display difference between native speakers and nonnative speakers. The difference is robust in the production of lax vowels, diphthongs, and stressed syllables, namely the English-specific features. L1 transfer on L2 specification is found both at the segmental levels and at the suprasegmental levels. The transfer levels measured as groups and individuals further show a continuum of divergence from the native-like target. Overall, the eldest group, students who are in the graduate schools, shows more native-like patterns, suggesting weaker foreign accent in English, whereas the high school students tend to involve larger deviation from the native speakers' patterns. Individual results show interdependence between segmental transfer and prosodic transfer, and correlation with self-reported proficiency levels. Additionally, experience factors in English such as length of English study and length of residence in English speaking countries are further discussed as factors to explain the acoustic variation.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.101-107
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• 2010

This study investigates the difference in the evaluation of English pronunciation quality between native speakers of English and Korean learners of English. This study employs a novel method of independently evaluating the prosody and segmentals of English sentences. A set of stimuli were made by swapping the prosody and the segmentals of English sentences read by a native speaker of American English and a Korean learner of English. Evaluations of the difference level of stimuli pairs and the goodness of the pronunciation quality showed that both native speakers of English and Korean learners of English give priority to the segmentals but native speakers of English were more sensitive to the difference in prosody in the evaluation of English pronunciation.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.45-53
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• 2011

Flemming and Johnson (2007) claim that there is a fundamental distinction between the mid central vowel [ə] and the high central vowel [?] in that [ə] occurs in an unstressed word-final position while [?] appears elsewhere. Compared to English counterparts, Korean [ə] and [?] are full vowels and they have phonemic contrast. The purpose of this paper is to explore the acoustic quality of two English reduced vowels produced by Korean learners and native speakers of English in terms of their two formant frequencies. Sixteen Korean learners of English and six native speakers of English produced four types of English words and two types of Korean words with different phonological and morphological patterns. The results show that Korean learners of English produced the two reduced vowels of English and their Korean counterparts differently in Korean and English words.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.3-10
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• 2011

This study examined the production of aspirated stop consonants in Korean and English words to address how the influences differed particularly in terms of proficiency in L2 English. Voice onset times (VOTs) were measured from two American monolinguals and seven Korean speakers. The results showed that VOT patterns for both L1 and L2 stops differed according to their proficiency in L2 English. In L2 English, high proficient speakers produced VOTs that were similar to those of native speakers of English whereas low proficient speakers produced VOTs that were significantly longer than those of proficient speakers. In L1 Korean and L2 English, most of the proficient speakers produced VOTs similarly. Unlike previous findings, Korean VOTs were even shorter than English counterparts. The VOT shortening of aspirated stops in Korean was found for most of the proficient speakers. The findings of the present study suggest that cross language phonetic influences as well as the ongoing VOT shortening in Korean aspirated stops may be correlated with L2 proficiency. Since this is a pilot study with a small number of subjects for each proficiency group, further quantitative study is necessary to generalize.