• MALSORI
• /
• no.4
• /
• pp.20-30
• /
• 1982

The aim of this paper is to analyse difficulties of the pronunciation in swedish vowels encountered by Koreans learners and to seek solutions in order to correct the possible errors. In the course of the analysis the swedish and Korean vowels in question are compared with the purpose of describing differences aha similarities between these two systems. This contrastive description is largely based on the students' articulatory speech level ana the writer's auditory , judgement . The following points are discussed : 1 ) Vowel length as a distinctive feature in Swedish compared with that of Korean. 2) A special attention is paid on the Swedish vowel [w:] that is characterized by its peculiar type of lip rounding. 3) The six pairs of Swedish vowels that are phonologically contrastive but difficult for Koreans to distinguish one from the other: [y:] ~ [w:], [i:] ~ [y:], [e:] ~ [${\phi}$:], [w;] ~ [u:] [w:] ~ [$\theta$], [$\theta$] ~ [u] 4) The r-colored vowel in the case of the postvocalic /r/ that is very common in American English is not allowed in English sound sequences. The r-colored vowel in the American English pattern has to be broken up and replaced hi-segmental vowel-consonant sequences . Korean accustomed to the American pronunciation are warned in this respect. For a more distinct articulation of the postvocalic /r/ trill [r] is preferred to fricative [z]. 5) The front vowels [e, $\varepsilon, {\;}{\phi}$) become opener variants (${\ae}, {\;}:{\ae}$] before / r / or supradentals. The results of the analysis show that difficulties of the pronunciation of the target language (Swedish) are mostly due to the interference from the Learner's source language (Korean). However, the Learner sometimes tends to get interference also from the other foreign language with which he or she is already familiar when he or she finds in that language more similarity to the target language than in his or her own mother tongue. Hence this foreign language (American English) in this case functions as a second language for Koreans in Learning Swedish.

• The Journal of Korean Academy of Prosthodontics
• /
• v.32 no.1
• /
• pp.77-102
• /
• 1994

Many studies have been made on the masticatory and esthetic effects of prosthodontic treatments, but few on the restoration of pronunciation, especially in complete denture wearers. The purpose of this study is to provide a basis that could be of help to the complete denture wearers' speech adaptation by analyzing the influence of the palatal coverage upon the duration of consonants and vowels with the method of experimental phonetics. For this study, metal plates and resin plates were made for 3 male subjects in their twenties, who have good occlusion, and do not have speech and hearing disorders. Then 8 Korean consonants and 4 Korean vowels were selected, systemically considering phonetic variants such as the place and manner of articulation, lenis/fortis, mutual effect of each phoneme, etc. They were combined into meaningless tested words in the form of /VCV/, and were included in the carrier sentences. Each informant uttered the sentences 1) without the plate, 2) with the metal plate, 3) with the resin plate. The recorded data were analyzed through the waveform of sounds and spectrogram by using the program SoundEdit, Signalize, Statview 512+for the Macintosh computer. The duration of each segment was measured by searching for the boundaries between the preceding vowels and consonants, and between the consonants and the following vowels. The study led to the conclusion that. 1. With the palatal plate, the duration of all the tested words increased and the duration increased more with the resin plate than with the metal plate. 2. With the palatal plate, the duration of all the preceding vowels, consonants, and following vowels increased, but the temporal structure of the tested words was maintained. 3. As for the manner of articulation, fricative /s/(ㅅ) was greatly influenced by both kinds of palatal plates. 4. As for the place of articulation, alveolar sounds /d/(ㄷ), /n/(ㄴ) were greatly influnced by the kinds of palatal plates, and the velar sounds /n/(ㅇ), /g/(ㄱ) were influenced by the platal plates, but the kind of the palatal plates did not show any significance. 5. As for the lenis/fortis, lenis was influenced more by the kind of the palatal plates. 6. As for the influence of vowels upon each segment in the tested words, palatal vowel /i/(ㅣ) had greater influence than pharyngeal vowel /a/(ㅏ), and following vowels than preceding vowels.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
• /
• v.21 no.7
• /
• pp.656-664
• /
• 2002

We present a statistical analysis of Korean phonological variations using a Grapheme-to-Phoneme (GPT) system. The GTP system used for experiments generates pronunciation variants by applying rules modeling obligatory and optional phonemic changes and allophonic changes. These rules are derived form morphophonological analysis and government standard pronunciation rules. The GTP system is optimized for continuous speech recognition by generating phonetic transcriptions for training and constructing a pronunciation dictionary for recognition. In this paper, we describe Korean phonological variations by analyzing the statistics of phonemic change rule applications for the 60,000 sentences in the Samsung PBS Speech DB. Our results show that the most frequently happening obligatory phonemic variations are in the order of liaison, tensification, aspirationalization, and nasalization of obstruent, and that the most frequently happening optional phonemic variations are in the order of initial consonant h-deletion, insertion of final consonant with the same place of articulation as the next consonants, and deletion of final consonant with the same place of articulation as the next consonant's, These statistics can be used for improving the performance of speech recognition systems.