• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.47-54
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• 2013

The purpose of this study is to analyse prosodic characteristics of accentual phrases (AP, hereafter) produced by Chinese learners of Korean in Korean text reading. The study is restricted only to the initial APs. Subjects are students who have been studying Korean at a beginner level. The results showed that Chinese learners of Korean tended to make errors in the realization of the tonal patterns of the initial 2 syllables of the initial APs. Also they showed different F0 slopes across the initial and second syllables in the initial APs. Chinese learners of Korean, therefore, need to focus on the prosodic characteristics of the initial 2 syllables of Korean APs to realize fluent Korean intonation.

• Language and Information
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.47-70
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• 2010

This study investigates the semantic and prosodic properties of the so-called contrastive topic. We posit two informational primitives, namely, topical feature [+-T] and focal feature [+-F], from which four different informational categories, i.e., [+T, +F], [+T, -F], [-T, +F], and [-T, -F], are yielded. It is proposed that the informational category of contrastive topic has focal property [+F] as well as topical property [+T]. Based on the semantic approach that regards the function of [+F] as identificational predication and that of [+T] as forming a semantic conditional clause, it is shown that the semantic function of contrastive topic, which is specified as [+T, +F], is the combination of these two functions, i.e., identificational predication in a semantic conditional clause. This is supported by a scrutinized exploration of the prosodic pattern of English contrastive topic.

• MALSORI
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• no.35_36
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• pp.25-36
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• 1998

The prosodic properties of Korean and English stress were examined with focus on syllable duration and pitch by loan words. 14 loan words were selected by the criteria of the numbers of syllables and stress positions. 3 Korean males using Seoul dialect and 3 American males using general American English served as subjects. Each tokens were uttered 3 times and second one was chosen to be analysed by CSL. We measured the duration and F0 of each syllable. In English, duration is the most salient acoustic correlates of stress, and pitch is the second. In Korean, by contrast, it seems that neither duration nor pitch is the acoustic features of stress, from our data

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.33-38
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• 2024

The present study investigated the perceptual cues utilized by Korean L2 learners of English in recognizing lexical stress in English nonwords, with a focus on the roles of fundamental frequency (F0) and duration. Twenty-three Korean learners of English participated in a sequence recall task involving nonword stimuli under five different conditions: (1) the naturally-produced stimuli, (2) the duration-only condition, (3) the F0-only condition, (4) the duration-F0 matching condition, and (5) the duration-F0 conflicting condition. The results demonstrate that F0 is the primary cue for stress perception among Korean L2 learners, whereas duration acts as a secondary cue, particularly when F0 is unreliable or absent. These findings highlight the influence of L1 prosodic structures on L2 perception and suggest that Korean L2 learners adapt their perceptual weighting of stress based on cue availability. This study contributes to the understanding of the role of cue weighting in L2 prosodic acquisition.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.11-19
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• 2014

The focus of this study was to investigate whether there is a position effect on identification accuracy of L2 consonants by Korean listeners and to examine how Korean listeners perceive the phonetic properties of initial and final consonants produced by a Korean learner of English and an English native speaker. Most studies examining L2 learners' perception of L2 sounds have focused on the segmental level but very few studies have examined the role of prosodic position in L2 learners' perception. In the present study, an identification test was conducted for English consonants /p, t, k, f, ɵ, s, ʃ/ in CVC prosodic structures. The results revealed that Korean listeners identified syllable-initial consonants more accurately than syllable-final consonants. The perceptual accuracy in syllable initial consonants may be attributable to the enhanced phonetic properties in the initial consonants. A significant correlation was found between error rates and F2 onset/offset for stops and fricatives, and between perceptual accuracy and RMS burst energy for stops. However, the identification error patterns were found to be different across consonant types and between the different language speakers. In the final position, Korean listeners had difficulty in identifying /p/, /f/, /ɵ/, and /s/ when they were produced by a Korean speaker and showed more errors in /p/, /t/, /f/, /ɵ/, and /s/ when they were spoken by an English native speaker. Comparing to the perception of English consonants spoken by a Korean speaker, greater error rates and diverse error patterns were found in the perception of consonants produced by an English native speaker. The present study provides the evidence that prosodic position plays a crucial role in the perception of L2 segments.

• Language and Information
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.105-121
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• 2002

This paper investigates the effect of semantic argument structure on the comprehension and production of sentences by observing the prosodic realizations of English secondary predications. Specifically, the goal of this study is to show how the theory of predication, argument structure, and focus semantically interact to account for similarities and differences between English resultative and depictive predications. To address this issue, production and comprehension tests were performed. In the fried focus domain (verb phrase), subjects were asked to utter and to comprehend ambiguous sentences in the context monologues. The experimental results were generally consistent with general linguistic analyses: In the resultative constructions, secondary subject NPs tend to be accented, as in other argument-head constructions, while in the depictive constructions, secondary predicates tend to have accents, as in other adjunct-head constructions.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Language and Information Conference
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• 2003.06a
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• pp.52-57
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• 2003

문장 안에서 새로운 정보를 닫고 있는 초점이 실제 말소리에서 드러나는 특징을 연구하였다. 초점과 초점 주변의 초분절소(suprasegmental, 강세, 길이, 성조)를 분석한 결과, 초점 보다 초점 앞의 강세구 길이가 크게 늘어나는 것을 관찰하였는데, 이때 강세구 전체 길이 보다 마지막 음절의 길이가 두드러지게 길게 발음되었다. 또한, 초점 앞에서 문장 단위의 끊어 읽기가 나타나는 것을 발견하였다. 인구어와는 달리 초점에 강세를 동반한다는 특징을 찾아볼 수는 없었다.

• Proceedings of the Acoustical Society of Korea Conference
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• spring
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• pp.317-320
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• 2002

본 논문에서는 초점 연구를 위해 통사-의미론적인 검증을 거친 질의-응답문 각각 120쌍을 녹취한 음성 자료를, K-ToBI를 이용하여 분절 표기(segmentation & labeling)한 것을 토대로 초점이 실제로 강세를 가지고 실현되는지, 강세를 가지고 실현되는 경우와 그렇지 않은 경우 그 액센트구는 어떤 유형인지, 그리고 초점이 나타나는 경우에 강세 외의 다른 운율적 특징이 나타나는지와 그러한 경우에 그 특징이 무엇인지 등의 문제를 중심으로 하여 국어 초점의 운율적 실현에 관하여 살펴 보았다.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.237-250
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• 2002

Linguistically, 'Focus' is the element which includes new or unpresupposed information. It is usually signalled by prosodic prominence called the 'pitch accent'. The purpose of this study is to observe the realization of the focal accent in VP-ellipsis, especially, to affect the meaning recovery of elided VP. Asher (1999) gave evidence that focal stress should be on the higher verb and the AUX in order to recover the elided VP to the lower one. In this paper, the systematic patterning of focal accent to decide the elided meaning in VP-ellipsis is to be observed. The realization of focal accent by English native speakers is set as the criteria for the meaning recovery of the elided VP and is compared to Koreans'. Moreover, the focal accents of Koreans are observed and compared with respect to their English proficiency levels.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.187-200
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• 2002

The purpose of the present study is to see in terms of $F_{0}$ variation in Japanese how discourse focus and the lexical word accent interact with each other in realizing overall intonation patterns. Discourse focus causes prosodic restructuring of phrase structures and, as a result, largely affects pitch contours, whereas the lexical word accent is said to delimit the $F_{0}$ into a certain range. Measurement of $F_{0}$ was made of utterances of Japanese sentences to observe behavior of pitch contours with varied focus assignment and lexical accent specifications. The utterances were obtained in question-answer discourse contexts so that in a sentence, either one NP was always focused or no focus was assigned. I set four points for $F_{0}$ measurement; $F_{1s},F_{1m}, F_{2s}$, and $F_{2m}$, two for each noun phrase corresponding to $F_{0}$ at the beginning of the first syllable and that of the vocalic portion of the second syllable in the two NP's. The results of present study were as follows: (1) for all combination of lexical accent types, the $F_{0}$ rise both in NP1 and NP2 are higher when focused than when not focused. (2) NP2 starts a new accentual phrase when focused, showing even higher $F_{0}$ than NP1, the latter of which implies that in forming a new accentual phrase by focusing, catathesis does not seem to take effect on NP2 preceded by accented NP1. (3) unfocused NP2 preceded by unaccented NP1 has higher $F_{0}$ than those preceded by accented NP1.