• 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.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.233-247
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• 2004

This study explores sound alternations in a consonant cluster in which at least one consonant is a sonorant (a son/C cluster, hereafter). In this study, I argue that phonological processes affecting son/C clusters result from low perceptual salience rather than from the Syllable Contact Law as discussed in Vennemann (1988), Clements (1990), Rice & Avery (1991), Baertsch & Davis (2000), among others. That is, as a main factor motivating the alternations in the cluster, I consider contrasts of weak perceptibility triggered by phonetic similarity between two members of a cluster (Kawasaki 1982, Ohala 1992, 1993). Based on the findings from a typological survey in 31 different languages, I show that a speech perception-based account makes a correct prediction regarding the patterning of sonorant/sonorant sequences and that of obstruent/sonorant sequences, while the syllable contact account does not.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.6
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• pp.1193-1220
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• 2009

This study examined the impact of sonority profiles, positional differences and L2 proficiency on Korean EFL learners' perception of English biconsonantal clusters, using nonce words. The overall results showed that major predictions of the sonority-based typological markedness on consonant clusters were supported, as obstruent plus sonorant and sonorant plus obstruent sequences were better perceived than obstruent only or sonorant only sequences. Yet, some consonant clusters did not show a preference for sonority profiles. Positional effects were also confirmed, as word-initial biconsonantal clusters were better perceived than wordfinal ones across all the participant groups. Participants' English proficiency turned out to be also important in the perception of consonant clusters, since university students' mean rate of accuracy was highest, followed by that of high school students, which in turn followed by that of middle school students. Further, the effects of other factors like frequency and stimuli on speech perception were also addressed, along with some implications for future research.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.39
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• pp.381-406
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• 2015

Russian nasal consonants / m /, / n / have a feature value not only [+consonant] in common with obstruents, but also [+sonorant] in common with vowels. Nasal / m /(bi-labial) and / n /(dental) have the same place of articulation but different manner of articulation. The feature value of / m / is [+cons, +son, +nas, +ant, -cor, -high, -low, -back, -cont, -del, rel, -strid, +voic], and that of / n / is [+cons, +son, +nas, +ant, +cor, -high, -low, -back, -cont, -del, rel, -strid, + voic]. There is a difference in feature [cor] value of / m / and / n /. In this study it is confirmed that it is a fact that the Russian nasal consonants behave differently from the other consonants in each phonological phenomenon due to their phonological characteristics. The preceding voiced obstruent is changed to an unvoiced one in a process where the last voiceless obstruent in the consonant cluster ' voiced obstruent + nasal /m/ + voiceless obstruent' skips the nasal consonant and spreads its feature value to the preceding voiced obstruent transparently because of the feature [+sonorant] of the nasal consonant. The coronal nasal /n/ participates in a palatalization with the following palatal actively and palatalize preceding plain consonants passively because of markedness hierarchy such as 'Velar > Labial > Coronal'. But the labial nasal /m/ is palatalized with the following velar palatal actively and participates in a palatalization with the following coronal palatal passively. This result helps us confirm the phonological difference of /m/ and /n/ in a palatalization. When the a final consonant is nasal, the unvoicing phenomenon of a final consonant doesn't occur. In such a case as cluster 'obstruent + nasal' the feature value [voiced] of the preceding obstruent doesn't change, but the following nasal can assimilate into the preceding obstruent. When continuing the same nasals / -nn- / in a consonant cluster, the feature value [+cont] of a weak position leads the preceding nasal / n / to be changed into [-cont] / l /. Through the analysis of the frequency of occurrences of consonants in syllabic onsets and codas that should observe the 'Sonority Sequence Principle', the sonority hierarchy of nasal consonants has been confirmed. In a diachronic perspective following nasal / m /, / n / there is a loss of the preceding labial stop and dental stop. But in clusters with the velar stop+nasal, the two-component cluster has been kept phonetically intact.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.23-31
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• 2011

This paper examines the production patterns of the acquisition of coda consonants in monosyllabic words in English-speaking children with cochlear implants. The data come from the transcribed speech of children with cochlear implants. This study poses three questions. First, do children with cochlear implants acquire onset consonants earlier than codas? Second, do children's productions have a bimoraic-sized constraint that maintains binary feet? Third, what patterns emerge from production of coda consonants? The results revealed that children with cochlear implants acquire onset consonants earlier than codas. With regard to the bimoraic-sized constraints, the productions of vowel type (i.e., monomoraic and bimoraic) were more accurate for monomoraic vowels than bimoraic ones for some children with cochlear implants, although accuracy in vowel productions showed high proportion regardless of vowel types. The variations of coda production exhibited individual differences. Some children produced less sonorant consonants with high frequency and others produced more sonorant ones. The results of this study were similar to those pertaining to children with normal hearing. In the process of coda consonant acquisition, the error patterns of prosody-sensitive production may be regarded as articulatory challenges to produce higher-level prosodic structures.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.5
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• pp.851-870
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• 2010

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the distribution of /ju/ in British English, especially after the coronal sonorants /n, l, /r/. The sequence /ju/ is related with vowels such as /u/, /ʊ/, and /ʊ/, and has occasioned a variety of conflicting analyses or suggestions. One of those is in which context /j/ is deleted if we suppose that the underlying form is /ju/. The context differs according to the dialect we deal with. In British English, it is known that /j/ is deleted always after /r/, and usually after /l/ when it occurs in an unstressed word-medial syllable. To check this well-known fact I searched OED Online (the 2nd Edition, 1989) for those words which contain /n, l, r/ + /ju, jʊ, u, ʊ, (j)u, (j)ʊ/ in their pronunciations, using the search engine provided by OED Online. After removing some unnecessary words, I classified the collected words into several groups according to the preceding sonorant consonants, the positions, and the presence (or absence) of the stress, of the syllable where /ju/ occurs. The results are as follows: 1) the deletion of /j/ depends on the sonorant consonant which /ju/ follows, the position where it occurs, and the presence of the stress which /ju/ bears; 2) though the influence of the sonorant consonants is strong, the position and stress also have non-trivial effect on the deletion of /j/, that is, the word-initial syllable and the stressed syllable prefer the deletion of /j/, and word-medial and unstressed syllable usually retain /j/; 3) the stress and position factors play their own roles even in the context where the effect of /n, l, r/ is dominant.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.230-233
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• 2007

In the literature on the tense consonants in Korean, it has been proposed that this consonant is underlyingly represented by a single consonant (the singleton hypothesis) and that it is represented by a sequence of two lenis consonants (the geminate hypothesis). One piece of the empirical evidence supporting the geminate hypothesis is that the closure duration of tense consonants in intervocalic position is more than twice as long in comparison with their lenis counterparts. In this paper, we report on the closure duration of three types of plosives in various phonotactically permitted contexts in Korean. The results of the measurement show that the duration of the tense consonants in post-sonorant contexts is reduced by a third in comparison with that of the intervocalic ones. These temporal differences suggest that the measurement of closure durations in intervocalic position alone is not sufficient to sustain the geminate hypothesis.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.15-23
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• 2020

This study examines the duration of Korean lax and tense stops in the prosodic word-medial position, their interactions with nearby segments, and the phonological implications of these interactions. It first examines the lengthening of consonants at the function of the short lax stop. Experiment 1 shows that the sonorant C1 is significantly longer before a short lax stop C2 than before a long tense stop. Experiment 2 shows that the short lax stop C1 cancels the contrast between the lax and tense obstruent at C2, making them appear as long tense obstruents (Post-Stop Tensing Rule). We suggest that such lengthening phenomena occur in Korean to robustly preserve the contrastive length difference between C and CC. Second, this study examines the vowel shortening, known as Closed-Syllable Vowel Shortening, before a long tense stop or before the consonant sequence. Experiment 3 suggests that it be interpreted as temporal adjustment to make the interval from the onset of a vowel to the onset of the following vowel of near-equal length. Conclusively, we suggest that Korean speech be planned and controlled with two specific intervals. One is the duration of contrastive consonant intervals between vowels, and the other is the duration from the onset of a vowel to the onset of the following vowel.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.87-103
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• 2004

This study investigates Korean listeners' perception of the English stop epenthesis between the sonorant and fricative segments. Specifically this study investigates 1) how often English epenthetic stops are perceived by native Korean listeners, given the fact that Korean does not allow consonant clusters in codas; and 2) whether perception of the epenthetic stops, which are optional phonetic variations, not phonemes, could be improved without any explicit training. 120 English non-words with a mono-syllable structure of CVC1C2, where C1=/m, n, $\eta$, 1/, and C2=/s, $\theta$, $\int$/, were given to two groups of native Korean listeners, and they were asked to detect the target stops such as [p], [t], and [k]. The number of their responses were computed to determine how often listeners succeed in recovering the string of segments produced by the native English speaker. The results of the present study show that English epenthetic stops are poorly identified by native Korean listeners with low English proficiency, even in the case where stimuli with strong acoustic cues are provided with, but perception of epenthetic stops is closely related with listeners' English proficiency, showing the possibility of the improvement of perception. It further shows that perception of epenthetic stops shows asymmetry between coronal and non-coronal consonants.

• Maxillofacial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.48-58
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• 2001

After performing mandibular setback surgery, we found some changes in patterns and organs of speech. This investigation was undertaken to investigate the aspect and degree of speech patterns according to the amount of surgical setback in mandibular prognathic patients. Thirteen patients with skeletal Class III malocclusion were studied preoperative and postoperative over 6 months. They had undergone the mandible setback operation via bilateral sagittal split ramus osteotomy(BSSRO). We split the patients into two groups. Group 1 included patients whose degree of mandibular setback was 6mm or less, and Group 2 above 6mm. Control group was two adults wish normal speech patterns. A phonetician performed narrow phonetic transcriptions of tape-recorded words and sentences produced by each of the patients and the acoustic characteristics of the plosives, fricatives, and flaps were analyzed with a phonetic computer program (Computerized Speech Lab(CSL) Model 4300B(USA)). The results are as follows: 1. Generally, Patients showed longer closure duration of plosives, shorter VOT(voice onset time) and higher ratio of closure duration against VOT. 2. Patients showed more frequent diffuse distribution than the control group in frication noise energy of fricatives. 3. In fricatives, frequency of compact from were higher in group 1 than in group 2. 4. Generally, a short duration of closure for /ㄹ/ was not realized in the patient's flaps. Instead, it was realized as fricatives, sonorant with a vowel-like formant structure, or trill type consonant. 5. Abnormality of the patient's articulation was reduced, but adaptation of their articulation after surgery was not perfect and the degree of adaptation was different according to the degree of surgical setback.