• MALSORI
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• no.65
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• pp.13-36
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• 2008

This paper attempts to analyze the characteristics of Korean vowel production by 12 Korean native speakers and 36 adult learners. The analyses have been performed with investigations of F1and F2 values. Results showed that there's no significant difference between /ㅔ/ and /H/ and between /ㅗ/ and /ㅜ/ in Korean native speakers' pronunciations. The distinguishing tendencies found in the analyses of foreign learners' pronunciations are fronting and lowering of /ㅗ/ by English speakers, backing and heightening of /ㅓ/ by Japanese speakers and backing and lowering of /ㅏ/ by Chinese speakers. For the limitations of this paper, it has a meaning of a preliminary study and could be developed into further research to show the order of acquisition and L1 transference.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.23-34
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• 2021

This study aims to discuss how Egyptian learners of Korean perceive and categorize Korean vowels, how Koreans perceive Korean vowels they pronounce, and how Egyptian learners' Korean vowel categorization affects their perception and production of Korean vowels. In Experiment 1, 53 Egyptian learners were asked to listen to Korean test words pronounced by Koreans and choose the words they had listened to among 4 confusable words. In Experiment 2, 117 sound files (13 test words×9 Egyptian learners) recorded by Egyptian learners were given to Koreans and asked to select the words they had heard among 4 confusable words. The results of the experiments show that "new" Korean vowels that do not have categorizable ones in Egyptian Arabic easily formed new categories and were therefore well identified in perception and relatively well pronounced, but some of them were poorly produced. However, Egyptian learners poorly distinguished "similar" Korean vowels in perception, but their pronunciation was relatively well identified by native Koreans. Based on the results of this study, we argued that the Speech Learning Model (SLM) and Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM) explain the L2 speech perception well, but they are insufficient to explain L2 speech production and therefore need to be revised and extended to L2 speech production.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.33-40
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• 2020

The purpose of this research was to find out the relation between Korean learners' English proficiency and the ratio of the length of the stressed vowel in a monosyllabic noun to that of the unstressed vowel in an article of the noun phrases (e.g., "a cup", "the bus", etcs.). Generally, the vowels in monosyllabic content words are phonetically more prominent than the ones in monosyllabic function words as the former have phrasal stress, making the vowels in content words longer in length, higher in pitch, and louder in amplitude. This study, based on the speech samples from Korean-Spoken English Corpus (K-SEC) and Rated Korean-Spoken English Corpus (Rated K-SEC), examined 879 English noun phrases, which are composed of an article and a monosyllabic noun, from sentences which are rated on 4 levels of proficiency. The lengths of the vowels in these 879 target NPs were measured and the ratio of the vowel lengths in nouns to those in articles was calculated. It turned out that the higher the proficiency level, the greater the mean ratio of the vowels in nouns to the vowels in articles, confirming the research's hypothesis. This research thus concluded that for the Korean English learners, the higher the English proficiency level, the better they could produce the stressed and unstressed vowels with more conspicuous length differences between them.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.25-32
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• 2017

Besides their effect on the f0 contour of the following vowel, Korean stops are undergoing a sound change in which a partial or complete consonantal merger on voice onset time (VOT) is taking place between aspirated and lax stops. Many previous studies on sound change have mainly focused on group-normative effects, that is, effects that are representative of the population as a whole. Few systematic quantitative studies of change in adult individuals have been carried out. The current study examines whether the sound change holds for individual speakers. It focuses on inter-speaker and intra-speaker variability on sound change in contemporary Korean. Speech data were collected for thirteen Seoul Korean speakers studying abroad in America. In order to minimize the possible effects of speech production, socio-phonetic factors such as age, gender, dialect, speech rate, and L2 exposure period were controlled when recruiting participants. The results showed that, for nine out of thirteen speakers, the consonantal merger is taking place between the aspirated and lax stop in terms of VOT. There were also intra-speaker variations on the merger in three aspects: First, is the consonantal (VOT) merger between the two stops is in progress or not? Second, are VOTs for aspirated stops getting shorter or not (i.e., the aspirated-shortening process)? Third, are VOTs for lax stops getting longer or not (i.e., the lax-lengthening process)? The results of remarkable inter-speaker and intra-speaker variability indicate a synchronous speech sound change of the stop system in contemporary Korean. Some speakers are early adopters or active propagators of sound change whereas others are not. Further study is necessary to see whether the inter-speaker differences exceed intra-speaker differences in sound change.