• Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.107-120
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• 2006

The main purpose of this study is to investigate whether Korean learners can use the vowel duration cue to distinguish voicing contrasts in word-final consonants in English. Given that the Korean group's performance on the auditory task was much better than their performance on the identification task or on the production task, we conclude that the AX discrimination task makes contact with a different layer of perception. In particular, the AX discrimination task can be done at the auditory or phonetic level, where differences in vowel length are still encoded in the representation. In contrast, the identification and production tasks are probing the mental representation of vowel length and voicing. It was also founded that Korean speakers stored neither vowel length nor voicing in memorized representations and did not internalize the lengthening of the preceding vowel as a rule to differentiate the voicing contrasts of final consonants, even though they were able to detect the acoustic differences in vowel duration provided that they were tested in an appropriate task.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.145-155
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• 2013

This study investigated the articulatory characteristics of Korean singleton and geminate sonorants in the word-medial position, effects of the duration of the sonorant consonant and the preceding vowel on perception, and the difference between native Korean speakers and foreign learners of Korean in perceiving the singleton and geminate consonant contrast. The Korean sonorant consonants(/m, n, l/) are examined from the VCCV, VCV sequences through speech production and perception experiments. The results suggest that the duration of the sonorant consonant is the most important factor for native Korean speakers to recognize whether sonorants are overlapped, and the duration of preceding vowel and other factors affect the recognition of singleton/geminate consonant contrast if the duration is not obvious. A perception experiment showed Chinese Korean language learners did not clearly distinguish singleton consonants from geminate consonants. The results of this study provide basic data for recognition of singleton/geminate consonant contrast in word-medial of Korean language, and can be utilized for teaching Korean pronunciation as a foreign language.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.542-551
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• 2015

The purpose of this study is to examine how Korean college students perceive and produce American English vowels /i, ɪ, eɪ, ${\varepsilon}$, ${\ae}$, ${\alpha}$, ɔ, oʊ, ʊ, u, ʌ/ embedded in CVC words, and further to examine the relationship between perception and production of the target vowels. Forty-two participants who are English major/double major were divided into 2 groups under different conditions: the control group took only theoretical lessons about English phonetics and the experimental group took 4-week phonetic training lessons in addition to the theoretical ones. The result of the pretest revealed that the two groups showed strong correlations between perception and production. However in the post-test, both of the two groups had no correlation between the two elements. The two groups showed changes in the correct percentage in the post-test and this had the influence on the correlations between perception and production. The control group showed the fluctuation in perception, whereas the experimental group showed improvement in production, and these changes in the post-test had an influence on the correlations between perception and production. Based on this analysis, pedagogical implications were discussed and limitations of the study were also described.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.53-59
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• 2017

The present study examined if individual listeners' perceptual variations were associated with their cognitive characteristics indexed by the Autistic Spectrum Quotient (AQ). This study first investigated the perception of the lexical pitch accent contrast in the Kyungsang Korean currently undergoing a sound change, and then tested if listeners' perceptual variations were correlated with their AQ scores. Eighteen Kyungsang listeners in their 20s participated in the perception experiment where they identified two contrastive accent words for auditory stimuli systematically varying F0 scaling and timing properties; the participants then completed the AQ questionnaire. In the results, the acoustic parameters reporting reduced phonetic differences across accent contrasts for younger Kyungsang generation played a reliable role in perceiving the HH word from HL, suggesting the discrepancy between the perception and the production in the context of sound change. This study also observed that individuals' perceptual variations were negatively correlated with their AQ sub scores. The present findings suggested that the sound change might appear differently between production and perception with a different time course, and deviant percepts could be explained by individuals' cognitive measure.

• MALSORI
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• v.55
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• pp.15-31
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• 2005

This study tests the hypothesis that the voiced-voiceless distinction is influenced by the relationship between acoustics and perception. Production and perception tests are conducted with temporal cues in different environments(CV, VCV, VC). The result showed that acoustic cues indicating significant difference between voiceless/voiced plosives do not behave just as do in perception. The result also showed that there existed an asymmetry between acoustics and perception.