• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.7 no.2
• /
• pp.3-8
• /
• 2015

Denasalization that nasals are replaced by stops is an unusual error pattern related to manner of articulation. The purpose of this study is to investigate the prevalence of denasalization and to scrutinize the nasal production according to phonological context for typically developing children and children with speech sound disorders(SSD). 220 typically developing children and 48 SSD children from 2~6 years of age were tested with a formal word test, and those who demonstrate denasalization were selected. In addition, the nasal production of SSD children with denasalization were analyzed for the correctness and the error types using the formal word test and spontaneous conversation. The results were as follows: (1) Denasalization was shown in below 10% of 2-3 years of age with typically developing children and in above 20% of 2-5 years of age with SSD. (2) The SSD children who demonstrate denasalization were categorized into 4 types according to the error context of nasals; nasal errors with all word positions, nasal errors with word-final and word-medial positions, nasal errors with word-medial position preceding vowels, and nasal errors with word-medial position preceding obstruents. These results indicate that denasalization is a clinically important error pattern, and word-medial position preceding obstruents is an essential context for denasalization in terms of Korean phonotactics.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.8 no.4
• /
• pp.63-69
• /
• 2016

Twenty five English native speakers with two different L2 experienced groups and nineteen native Koreans heard both Korean word-initial nasals (/m/ and /n/) in three vowel contexts (low, mid, and high) produced by a native Korean speaker. The experiment examined the hypothesis that Korean nasals are more likely to be judged or perceived correctly by the L2-experienced English learners of Korean than the unexperienced counterparts. The result showed that L2 experienced group was more sensitive to effects of vowel height in judging the Korean nasals in which the perception of nasals before the high vowels was more subject to it. In addition, place of nasal articulation causes asymmetry relations - bilabial nasal /m/ is more likely to be perceived as plosives rather than alveolar nasal /n/. The study found that the L2 experience has a somewhat limited role in perceiving the nasals correctly in the word-initial position, especially before the high vowels, in that even the L2 experienced English subjects have difficulty in identifying the Korean nasals correctly in this environment. Nevertheless, low L2 proficiency might be accounted for the difficulty in the bilabial nasal identification observed by the L2 experienced group.