• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.19-24
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• 2022

This study examined which acoustic cue(s) that Korean learners of English give weight to in perceiving English lexical stress. We manipulated segmental and suprasegmental cues in 5 steps in the first and second syllables of an English stress minimal pair "object". A total of 27 subjects (14 native speakers of English and 13 Korean L2 learners) participated in the English stress judgment task. The results revealed that native Korean listeners used the F0 and intensity cues in identifying English stress and weighted vowel quality most strongly, as native English listeners did. These results indicate that Korean learners' experience with these cues in L1 prosody can help them attend to these cues in their L2 perception. However, L2 learners' perceptual attention is not entirely predicted by their linguistic experience with specific acoustic cues in their native language.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.15-22
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• 2018

Stressed vowels in English are usually produced using longer duration, higher pitch, and greater intensity than unstressed vowels. However, many English as a foreign language (EFL) learners have difficulty producing English lexical stress because their mother tongues do not have such features. In order to investigate if certain non-native English speakers (Korean, Japanese, and Taiwanese-Chinese native speakers) are able to produce English lexical stress in a native-like manner, speech samples were extracted from the L2 learners' corpus known as AESOP (the Asian English Speech cOrpus Project). Sixteen disyllabic words were analyzed in terms of the ratio of duration, pitch, and intensity. The results demonstrate that non-native English speakers are able to produce English stress in a similar way to native English speakers, and all speakers (both native and non-native) show a tendency to use duration as the strongest cue in producing stress. The results also show that the duration ratio of native English speakers was significantly higher than that of non-native speakers, indicating that native speakers produce a bigger difference in duration between stressed and unstressed vowels.

• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
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• v.1 no.4
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• pp.509-536
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• 2001

The traditional typology of English poetic meters makes a binary division between strong-stress (or accentual) meters and accentual-syllabic (or syllable-stress or syllable-accent) meters. According to this typology, Old and Middle English alliterative poetry was composed in strong-stress meter; the iambic pentameter from Chaucer to Yeats and on to the present has been an accentual-syllabic meter. Intersecting with this literary typology is a linguistic typology that classifies languages of the world as stress-timed or syllable-timed or some mix of the two. English is a clear example of a stress-timed language. Whereas most descriptions of strong-stress meter focus on the counting of stresses, the present study focuses on the patterns of unstressed syllables between the stresses (possibly at isochronous intervals). The implications of this analysis suggest a new typology in which certain forms of English verse follow strict grammatical stress (mainly Old and Middle English, but for reasons different from “strong-stress” expectations) and other forms are shaped by a compromise of grammatical stress and the metrical template. Within this later group, iambic pentameter contrasts with trochaic, anapestic, and dipodic meters in lending itself more readily to modulation. Some of this modulation comes from an easy incorporation into iambic pentameter of elements associated with Old and Middle English meters.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.9-14
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• 2018

This study compared the relative contributions of intensity, F0, duration and vowel spectra of L2 English lexical stress by Japanese and Korean learners of English. Recordings of Japanese, Korean and native English speakers reading eighteen 2 to 4 syllable words in a carrier sentence were analyzed using multiple regression to investigate the influence of each acoustic correlate in determining whether a vowel was stressed. The relative contribution of each correlate was calculated by converting the coefficients to percentages. The Japanese learner group showed phonological transfer of L1 phonology to L2 lexical prosody and relied mostly on F0 and duration in manifesting L2 English stress. This is consistent with the results of the previous studies. However, advanced Japanese speakers in the group showed less reliance on F0, and more use of intensity, which is another parameter used in native English stress accents. On the other hand, there was little influence of F0 on L2 English stress by the Korean learners, probably due to the transfer of the Korean intonation pattern to L2 English prosody. Hence, this study shows that L1 transfer happens at the prosodic level for Japanese learners of English and at the intonational level for Korean learners.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.20 no.11
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• pp.378-390
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• 2020

English stress plays such a critical role in understanding spoken English words that its misplacement can lead to a breakdown of communication. Korean learners of English, whose native language is known to lack this feature, are expected to have some difficulty acquiring this English prosodic system. This study explored how Korean is different from English in manifesting prominence at the word level and how the interlanguage of Korean learners of English is dissimilar to both languages in that regard. Four polysyllabic English loanwords in Korean and their English source words were used as stimuli. Ten native English speakers read the English source words while ten Korean learners of English read the English loan words first and then the English source words. The analysis of 120 speech samples revealed that Korean words did not have any salient syllable realized by all stress features: duration, amplitude, and F0. On the contrary, English words had syllables with relative prominence, which was consistently manifested by all the features. Interestingly, in realizing English stress, the interlanguage of the Korean English learners bore more resemblance to that of English than that of their native language.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.121-135
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• 2007

The purpose of this paper is to examine how Korean speakers realize English stress and rhythm at the sentence level, and investigate what different acoustic characteristics of English sentence stress and rhythm Korean speakers have, compared with those of American English speakers. Stressed words in the sentence were analyzed in terms of duration, fundamental frequency, and intensity of the stressed vowel in the word with neutral stress and with emphatic stress, respectively. According to the results, when the words had emphatic stress, both Koreans' and Americans' F0 and intensity of the stressed vowel were higher than those with neutral stress. Korean speakers of English realized the sentence stress with shorter vowel duration and higher F0 than American English speakers when the words had emphatic stress. The analysis of the timing of the sentence with increased unstressed syllables showed that both Americans and Koreans produced the sentence with longer duration as the number of unstressed syllables increased. However, the duration of unstressed syllables between stressed syllables by Koreans was longer than that by Americans. Americans seemed to produce unstressed syllables between stressed syllables faster than Koreans for regular intervals of stressed syllables. This analysis implies that if there are more unstressed syllables between stressed syllables, Koreans might produce unstressed syllables and the whole sentence with longer duration.

• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.53-76
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• 2002

This paper aims to review Hammond's (1999) analysis of English word stress and propose an alternative by exploring two questions: Why English words display flexible stress patterns and what are the conditions all English words have to obey. As answers to the questions I propose an invisible suffix after words with final stress, foot structures with two levels, and four constraints, two of them are attained by revision of Hammond's. As long as words satisfy the constraints, more than one foot structures are allowed. That is why the English lexicon displays flexibility.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.143-148
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• 2002

This study examined the foreign accent of Korean speakers of English concerning vowel length and utterance position. It then attempts to explain the foreign accent of Koreans when they speak English. The method was to measure the sentence-initial and sentence-final vowels as spoken by Koreans. I chose these two positions, sentence-initial and sentence-final, in order to know if Korean speakers of English, compared with native English speakers, show a difference in sentence stress. I chose English diphthongs, because most Koreans have difficulty pronouncing these sounds. I found that Korean speakers of English as a second language do not know English sentence stress patterns and show a foreign accent, especially when using diphthongs.

• MALSORI
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• no.42
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• pp.57-69
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• 2001

Syntactic ambiguity can be understood by context usually, especially in reading and writing. Because phonological structure including stress, intonation and phonological phenomena can be pronounced differently according to different syntactic structures, syntactic ambiguity can be solved by phonological structure in listening and speaking. The objectives of this study was to survey how Korean English teachers apply phonological structures in order to solve syntactic ambiguity. The results of this study is as follows: First, Korean English leachers applied Compound Stress Rules well, when the second word was not branched. But they did not apply Compound Stress Rules well, when the second word was branched. Second, several Korean English teachers did not apply Nuclear Stress Rules well. They usually put the strongest stress on the first word. Third Korean English teachers did not differentiate appropriate applying situation of palatalization. They applied palatalization at both the single and the separated Phonological Phrase. Fourth, Korean English teachers did not apply stress shifting when stress crash happened. Because they did not apply stress shifting, they put the strongest stress on inappropriate syllable.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.177-190
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• 2004

The purpose of this paper IS to investigate the aspects of errors of English stress by Korean students. In this experimental study, 17 students participated and read 120 words which are divided into three types-the beginning, the middle, and the advanced-according to the level of words. As a result of acoustical judgement, there were a greater number of errors In the advanced level of words, and the more syllables the words have, the more errors occurred, tins means Korean students who learn English as a second language have trouble realizing the right stress in words with larger numbers of syllables and the more advanced level. Furthermore it is interesting that Korean students imposed the primary stress on the second syllable when producing words with stress in the first, third and forth syllables.