• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2000.07a
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• pp.332-332
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• 2000

The purpose of this study is to investigate the perception and production of English vowels by native speakers of Korean. In perception test, twelve English vowels /${\ae},{\;}a,{\;}{\Game},{\;}e,{\;}{\varepsilon},{\;}i,{\;}I,{\;}a,{\;}o,{\;}u,{\wedge},{\;}{\mho}$/, as in had, hard, hoard, hayed, head, heed, hid, hod, hoed, whod, Hudd, and hood produced by native speakers of English were used as perception test materials and subjects were asked to identify the vowels. Two different groups of subjects participated in the perception test. One consisted of 90 students who were taking an English phonetics course, and the other consisted of 64 who were not. The results showed that the former did better than the latter m identifYing English vowels, and that vowels in 'head' and 'had' were relatively hard to identify, while vowels in 'hayed', 'hard', and unexpectedly, 'heed' and hid' were easy to perceive. In production test, two native English speakers and 4 native Korean speakers served as subjects. The 4 native Korean speakers were divided into two groups as in the perception test, experienced and inexperienced, depending on whether they were taking an English phonetics course or not. Native English speakers generally showed significant differences both in vowel duration and in FI & F2 values between members of the vowel pairs which are of special interest of this study: /i/ vs. /I/, /${\ae}$/ vs. /$\varepsilon$/, and /u/ vs. and /$\mho$/. There was no significant difference between the two Korean groups. Native Korean speakers showed much difference in neither duration nor FI & F2 values except significant durational difference in /i/ vs. /I/ pair.

• MALSORI
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• no.35_36
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• pp.1-12
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• 1998

This study aims to investigate the prosodic characteristics of Korean discourse sentences, especially focusing the initial and final part of a sentence. 50 disourse sentences were read in two different styles; one, sentence by sentence, the other, continuous of all 50's. First, we tried to get two kinds of ratios from the acoustic results: first, ratio of the final syllable to the initial syllable in first word in a sentence; second, ratio of the final syllable to the initial syllable in last word in a sentence. We, then, calculated statistical values of the ratios including mean, standard deviation, minimum, maximum, and p-values in t-test. With respect to duration, there were little difference between two different styles. If any, we could see tiny unharmonious durational aspect in the initial of continuous reading. More concisely, there could be observed some deviation from standard. In case of F0, there was prominent statistical difference between ratios of last words in two styles. This difference might play a role as a prosodic feature. Energy seems to show similar pattern with that of F0. The results showed that final syllable in last word was pronounced with about 85 % of initial syllable in the same context and the last words in continuous speech were strongly articulated compared with those of sentence by sentence reading.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2002.11a
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• pp.157-160
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• 2002

This study aims to define the isochronism of English feet. To assess the average value of moras of a foot, the study is, first, to set up a way of counting the number of the moras on the extrametricality with some modifications. Secondly, with the measurement of the average duration of feet of Shakespeare's 120 sonnets through Praat (version 4.030, 2002), it clarifies the foot isochronism in English. With the two ways of measuring the isochronism, it clarifies the fact the foot isochronism permits the difference scope of $2.2{\mu}'s$ (moras) to $1.8{\mu}'s$, that is, $22{\mu}'s$ to $18{\mu}'s$ per line, while the acoustic assessment shows the isochronically congnitive gap of 302-447msec. per foot, or 4,461msec. to 3,019msec. per line in case of iambic pentameter in English poetry.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.53-62
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• 2008

The purpose of this study was to examine the English l sound in an English short story produced by 16 Korean students in order to determine various allophones of the sound using acoustic visual displays and perceptual judgments. The subjects read the story in a quiet office at normal speed. Each word included the lateral sound in onset or coda positions and before a vowel of the following word. Results showed as follows: Firstly, there was a durational difference between the two major groups. Also the majority of the subjects produced the clear l regardless of the contexts. Some students produced the sound as the Korean flap or the English glide [r]. A few missing cases were also seen. The dark l was mostly produced by the subjects of English majors in coda position with a few cases before a vowel in a phrase. Visual displays using the computer analysis were very helpful in distinguishing lateral variants but sometimes perceptual process would be necessary to judge them in fast and weak production of the target word. Further studies would be desirable to test the discrepancies between the acoustical and perceptual decisions.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 1996.10a
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• pp.208-213
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• 1996

This paper reports a preliminary investigation on the time course of intersyllabic coarticulation in Standard Chinese. In this investigation, around 3800 phonetically compact C1V1-C2V2 type disyllabic structures 3re employed to observe the acoustic effect of coarticulation in general, and about 400 disyllabic words are designed as the materials to examine: (1) How the articulators move from one syllable to the next？ (2) What is the extent to which the syllables overlapped？ And (3) In what sense, the syllables are produced in parallel; and in what sense, they are in sequence？ For the convenience of description, we just take the offset transition of V1 end the onset transition of C2 os the rough representations for anticipatory and carryover effect respectively, durational measurements are made correspondingly. To evaluate the possible influence on the behavior of gestural overlap from stress contrast and constituent difference of the syllables, analysis of variance are counducted as well. Based on this study, Some impressions about general nature of coarticulation behined the intersyllabic gesture overlapping in this language are discussed.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.71-79
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• 2019

This study aims to investigate the rhythmic patterns in the English speech produced by Chinese learners of English who learn English as a foreign language (EFL learners). Utilizing interval-based rhythm metrics, namely, VarcoC, VarcoV, nPVI-C, nPVI-V, and %V, the study compared the rhythmic differences in English speech between ten native speakers from the United States and forty Chinese EFL learners from mainland China. A sentence elicitation task consisting of thirty picture prompts and corresponding thirty stimuli sentences with at least five vocalic and four consonantal intervals was conducted. Statistical results reveal that both Chinese advanced learners and beginners had significantly lower degree of stress-timed in their English speech, indicating that the acquisition of the L2 speech rhythm was influenced by the learners' L1 rhythmic pattern. In addition, the results also show that the Chinese advanced learners had significantly higher degree of stress-timed in their English speech than beginners and showed no significant difference with native speakers in VarcoC and nPVI-C. These results indicate that the direction of L2 speech rhythm development was from more syllable-timed to more stress-timed.