• 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.

• Journal of Korean language education
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.1-21
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to investigate the aspect of production and perception of Korean vowels /${\Lambda}$/ and /o/ and to discuss the correlation between production and perception of the two vowels. For this purpose, two separate experiments were conducted. 19 Chinese learners and 20 Korean native speakers produced Korean vowels /${\Lambda}$/ and /o/. Production experiments indicated that Koreans and Chinese female groups revealed common features in production, showing that they all pronounced /${\Lambda}$/ and /o/ in a distinguishable manner in the acoustic space. On the other hand, the Chinese male group failed to show that they could pronounce two vowels distinctively. The Chinese male group seemed to be confused in vowel height between the two vowels. A perception experiment was carried out on a continuum consisting of 11 synthesized stimuli. The perceptual judgment from referred Chinese and Korean subjects showed that Koreans and Chinese female groups had the same phonological boundaries (stimulus '04') for the two vowels on the continuum. However, the Chinese male group made perceptual criterion on stimulus '03'. These results confirmed that there was strong correlation between the aspect of production and perception.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.7-27
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• 2006

This study explored the discrimination of synthesized English vowel pairs by twenty-seven American and Korean, male and female listeners. The average formant values of nine monophthongs produced by ten American English male speakers were employed to synthesize the vowels. Then, subjects were instructed explicitly to respond to AX discrimination tasks in which the standard vowel was followed by another one with the increment or decrement of the original formant values. The highest and lowest formant values of the same vowel quality were collected and compared to examine patterns of vowel discrimination. Results showed that the American and Korean groups discriminated the vowel pairs almost identically and their center formant frequency values of the high and low boundary fell almost exactly on those of the standards. In addition, the acceptable range of the same vowel quality was similar among the language and gender groups. The acceptable thresholds of each vowel formed oval to maintain perceptual contrast from adjacent vowels. The results suggested that nonnative speakers with high English proficiency could match native speakers' performance in discriminating vowel pairs with a shorter inter-stimulus interval. Pedagogical implications of those findings are discussed.

• 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.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.25-36
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• 2021

This study examined the perception and production of eight English fricatives /f/, /v/, /θ/, /ð/, /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, and /ʒ/ by thirty Chinese English majors and thirty Chinese middle school students through a fricative identification test, an intelligibility test, and a goodness rating test and focused on error patterns and the perception-production relationship. The results showed that substitution errors occurred frequently in the perception and production of English fricatives by both the English majors and the middle school students. Further, the error patterns were attributed to various influencing factors such as the negative transfer from Chinese consonant inventory, hypercorrection or overcompensation mistakes, deficiency of L2 teaching, and acoustic similarities. Significant overall correlations were found between the fricative perception and production by the two subject groups but were not manifested in all the eight fricatives, indicating that Chinese learners' perceptual competence of target fricatives was not necessarily tied to their productive excellence of those sounds in all cases. Furthermore, precedences of perception over production were incompletely manifested in the eight fricatives, which suggested that perception might not always be a necessary prerequisite for production. Additionally, subject group and vowel context differences were observed. The English majors performed better than the middle school students, both perceptually and productively, and the subjects' performances in perception and production varied when vowel contexts changed.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.325-331
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• 2010

Categorical perception has been noted as characteristic properties of linguistic stimuli. In this study, Korean monosyllabic minimal pairs (consonant-vowel-consonant, CVC) were analyzed to understand perception boundaries between clinically confusing words. An efficient scheme has been developed to systematically synthesize temporal transition waveforms (11 steps) from one word to the target word for the pairs of /gom/-/gong/, /non/-/noon/, and /don/-/non/. The corresponding slopes, widths, and non-dominant factors of perception boundaries were analyzed for the total of 40 young normal subjects (20 males and 20 females). Results showed that there were relative pattern differences among confusing monosyllabic minimal pairs under categorical perception. For instance, the vowel difference within CVC pairs led to the lowest boundary performance in this experiment set. Data also indicated the potential application of the overall procedure for evaluating auditory functions and assisting rehabilitation programs.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.49-56
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• 2011

This study investigates how American English high back vowels are identified. American English and Korean speakers participated in a phonetic experiment for this study. This study shows their response times of the vowels and discusses how the speakers identified them. For the experiment I used a synthesized vowel continuum between American English /u/ and /$\mho$/based on American English male speakers' voice obtained by Peterson and Barney (1952). I manipulated spectral steps and vowel duration of the stimuli. The statistical results showed that American English speakers were not able to distinguish the stimuli based on spectral quality. Instead they relied on vowel duration. This suggests that the American English high back vowels have changed since Peterson and Barney recorded them in 1952. The Korean speakers also relied on vowel duration, not spectral quality since they could not distinguish them. American speakers' response times of these vowels were not affected by both spectral quality and vowel duration. Koreans' response times were affected by vowel durations only.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.77-83
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• 2015

The aim of this paper is to investigate Japanese speakers' perception of Korean tense consonants. In a range of perceptual experiments Japanese participants were directed to label Korean stimuli using Japanese katakana characters. The analysis of the results showed a strong influence of Japanese phonology in the responses. Japanese perception of sokuon was increased, (1) when the tense consonants were in word medial position, (2) when tense consonants were other than /s/, (3) when the tense consonant followed voiceless consonants, (4) when the consonants were part of a cluster sharing their point of articulation, (5) when preceding vowel were other than /u/, (6) when following vowel were /u/. This result, showing preference for phonology, is in harmony with previous research on the Japanese sokuon perception using Japanese (Takeyasu 2009, Matsui 2011), and Italian (Tanaka & Kubozono 2008) stimuli.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.89-96
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• 2014

This study measured speech intelligibility in relation to the vowel space area and the perception of the listener through acoustic analysis of children who had received cochlear implants. It also provided basic data in the evaluation of speech intelligibility by analyzing the correlation between the vowel space area and speech intelligibility. As a research method, the vowel space area was analyzed by obtaining the value of $F_1$, $F_2$ in children three years after receiving cochlear implants, and compared them to normal children by measuring speech intelligibility through interval scaling. A product-moment correlation analysis was conducted to investigate the correlation. Results showed that the vowel space area of the children who had received cochlear implants was significantly different from that of the normal children, though their speech intelligibility showed similar points to those of the normal children. The results of the correlation analysis on the vowel space area and speech intelligibility showed no significant correlation. Therefore, the period of improving intelligibility after receiving cochlear implants and the objective standards of the vowel space area could be established. In addition, the acoustic rating was required to increase the accuracy of the objective measurement in the evaluation of speech intelligibility.

• Journal of Korean language education
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.1-23
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• 2018

This paper investigates how adult Mandarin- and English- speaking learners of Korean perceive Korean vowels, with focus on the effect of the first language (L1) and the second language (L2) acoustic relationship, as well as the influence of Korean language experience. For this study, native Mandarin and Canadian English speakers who have learned Korean as a foreign language, as well as a control group of native Korean speakers, participated in two experiments. Experiment 1 was designed to examine acoustic similarities between Korean and English vowels, as well as Korean and Mandarin vowels to predict which Korean vowels are relatively easy, or difficult for L2 learners to perceive. The linear discriminant analysis (Klecka, 1980) based on their L1-L2 acoustic similarity predicted that L2 Mandarin learners would have perceptual difficulty rankings for Korean vowels as follows: (the easiest) /i, a, e/ >> /ɨ, ʌ, o, u/ (most difficult), whereas L2 English learners would have perceptual difficulty rankings for Korean vowels as follows: (the easiest) /i, a, e, ɨ, ʌ/ >> /o, u/ (most difficult). The goal of Experiment 2 was to test how accurately L2 Mandarin and English learners perceive Korean vowels /ɨ, ʌ, o, u/ which are considered to be difficult for L2 learners. The results of a mixed-effects logistic model revealed that English listeners showed higher identification accuracy for Korean vowels than Mandarin listeners, indicating that having a larger L1 vowel inventory than the L2 facilitates L2 vowel perception. However, both groups have the same ranking of Korean vowel perceptual difficulty: ɨ > ʌ > u > o. This finding indicates that adult learners of Korean can perceive the new vowel /ɨ/, which does not exist in their L1, more accurately than the vowel /o/, which is acoustically similar to vowels in their L1, suggesting that L2 learners are more likely to establish additional phonetic categories for new vowels. In terms of the influence of experience with L2, it was found that identification accuracy increases as Korean language experience rises. In other words, the more experienced English and Mandarin learners of Korean are, the more likely they are to have better identification accuracy in Korean vowels than less experienced learners of Korean. Moreover, there is no interaction between L1 background and L2 experience, showing that identification accuracy of Korean vowels is higher as Korean language experience increases regardless of their L1 background. Overall, these findings of the two experiments demonstrated that acoustic similarity between L1 and L2 sounds using the LDA model can partially predict perceptual difficulty in L2 acquisition, indicating that other factors such as perceptual similarity between L1 and L2, the merge of Korean /o/ and /u/ may also influence their Korean vowel perception.