The Perception and Production of English // and // by Korean Children and Adults Living in North America (original) (raw)
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Journal of Phonetics, 2005
This study examined the production and perception of English vowels by native Korean (NK) learners of English on two occasions separated by about 1 year. A preliminary experiment revealed that NK adults classified some pairs of contrastive English vowels using two different Korean vowels whereas other pairs showed classification overlap, implying they would be difficult for Korean learners of English to discriminate. In two subsequent experiments, NK adults and children differing in length of residence in North America (3 vs. 5 years; 4 groups of 18 each) were compared to age-matched native English (NE) speakers. In Experiment 2, NK children were found to discriminate English vowels more accurately than NK adults but less accurately than NE children. In Experiment 3, English words containing /i I e I e ae > e/ were elicited using a picture-naming task. Some vowels produced by NK children were heard as intended significantly more often than vowels produced by NK adults. Acoustic analyses revealed that NK children produced significantly larger between-vowel contrasts than NK adults but did not differ from NE children. (K. Tsukada).
Resul glish / / and / / by Korean in North America
2003
This study assessed the production and categorial discrimination of English / / and / / by native Korean (NK) adults and children. A total of 108 participants (72 NK and 36 age-matched native English speakers) were tested twice. The NK participants were further subdivided according to length of residence (LOR) in North America. In Experiment 1, both the NK adults and NK children differed from age-matched native English (NE) participants in discriminating / / from / /, but the NK children showed more accurate discrimination than the NK adults did. The participants’ productions of / / and / / were examined in Experiment 2. An acoustic analysis suggested that, unlike the results obtained for vowel discrimination, the NK children’s production of the two target vowels closely resembled NE children’s. However, the NK adults failed to produce as large a contrast as NE adults. The differing pattern of results obtained for discrimination and production for the NK children but not the NK adul...
Discrimination of synthesized English vowels by American and Korean listeners
Journal of The Acoustical Society of America - J ACOUST SOC AMER, 2001
This study explored the discrimination of synthesized English vowel pairs by 27 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 an oval to maintain pe...
Production and Perception of North and South Korean Vowels: A Pilot Study
2019
Previous studies have reported that some North Korean and South Korean vowels have undergone changes in different directions after decades of relative isolation. This paper presents a pilot study concentrating on three such pairs of vowels ([ɯ]-[u], [ʌ]-[o], and [e]-[æ]), with a particular interest in examining language standards in each variety by comparing newscasters and regular speakers from each country. Acoustic analyses of vowel spaces confirmed some North-South differences, and a perception test verified that North Korean [ʌ] and [o] are highly confusable to South Korean speakers. Noteworthy in the data, North Korean regular speakers who now reside in South Korea showed some vowel patterns that were different from both North Korean newscasters and South Korean speech.
Journal of linguistic geography, 2023
Recent sociophonetic research has focused on the ways in which race and ethnicity influence language as well as how language is used to construct racial and ethnic identity. Comparisons of the speech of members of one ethnic group across different regions are still uncommon. In this study, fifty-one native American English speakers of Korean descent, hailing from three different dialect areas of the United States (Los Angeles County and Orange County, California; Harris County, Texas; and Gwinnett County, Georgia), were recorded speaking English in casual interviews. Their speech was analyzed for characteristics of local sound patterns in each region, including the Short Front Vowel Shift (California Vowel Shift) and the Southern Vowel Shift, as well as overall Vowel Space Area. All three groups showed evidence of the Short Front Vowel Shift, and none demonstrated the Southern Vowel Shift. The Californian speakers had the smallest vowel spaces, while the Georgian speakers had the largest. We relate these findings to the ways Korean Americans in Texas and California understand their ethnic identity vis-à-vis a kind of metropolitan or urban speech style in a highly multicultural environment, while, in comparison, Korean Americans in Georgia may use vowel space to highlight their orientation toward or away from local mainstream (white) cultural identity.
While the two-way voicing contrast of English stops can be distinguished by VOT alone, the three-way laryngeal contrast of Korean stops requires additional acoustic parameter, f0, together with VOT for its realization . The distinct acoustic characteristics of the Korean and English stops may create difficulties in English speakers' discrimination of the non-native Korean contrasts. To confirm this hypothesis, the current study examines English speakers' discrimination of a three-way laryngeal distinction of Korean stops /p t k/ in the word-initial position of disyllabic minimal pairs. The result supports the hypothetical link between acoustic patterns and perceptual discrimination to a large extent by displaying a relatively low correct discrimination level on the lenis-fortis contrast. This leads to a conclusion that f0 is as important as VOT for non-native listeners to fully perceive the three-way contrast of Korean stops.
Degree of foreign accent in English sentences produced by Korean children and adults
Journal of Phonetics, 2006
The purpose of this longitudinal study was to evaluate the influence of age (adult vs. child) and length of residence (LOR) in an L2-speaking country (3 vs. 5 years) on degree of foreign accent in a second language (L2). Korean adults and children living in North America, and age-matched groups of native English (NE) adults and children, recorded English sentences in sessions held 1.2 years apart (T1 vs. T2). NE-speaking listeners rated the sentences for overall degree of perceived foreign accent using a 9-point scale. The native Korean (NK) children received significantly higher ratings than the NK adults did, but lower ratings than the NE children. The NK children-even those who had arrived as young children and been enrolled in English-medium schools for an average of 4 years-spoke English with detectable foreign accents. The effects of LOR and the T1-T2 differences were non-significant for both the NK adults and the NK children. The findings were inconsistent with the hypothesis that adult-child differences in L2 speech learning are due to the passing of a critical period. The suggestion is made that the milder foreign accents observed for children than adults are due, at least in part, to the greater L2 input typically received by immigrant children than adults. r
Cross‐language identification of consonants. Part 1. Korean perception of English
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1996
Twenty native Korean-speaking subjects heard 22 English word-initial consonants in three vowel contexts produced by three native English talkers. The subjects orthographically labeled each English consonant as the closest Korean consonant. They then judged how similar the English consonant was to the Korean consonant on a scale of 1 to 5. Some English consonants were labeled consistently as a single Korean consonant and judged to be very similar. Other English consonants were labeled consistently as a single Korean consonant but judged to be less similar. Still other English consonants were inconsistently labeled. Korean acoustic cues, vowel context, and token differences appeared to influence labeling choices.
Cross-language vowel perception and production by Japanese and Korean learners of English
Journal of Phonetics, 1997
This paper investigates the roles of language-specific phonological learning and inherent phonetic contrastiveness in the perception of non-native vowels . Native speakers of Korean and Japanese , at two levels of English language experience , were assessed on the perception and production of Australian English monophthongal non-back vowels : / i : I e ( a : / . Prototypicality ratings , or perceived similarities of the foreign vowels to their nearest native (L1) phonemic targets , were also examined , to assess models of cross-language vowel perception . Korean is of interest because of a recent phonological merger of two front vowels ( / e / and / E / ) , which has produced a generation split among speakers of Seoul dialect above and below 45 -50 years of age (Hong , 1991) . The present study is the first reported case of how a phonemic merger , resulting in cross-generation dif ferences within a speech community , can influence speakers' perception and production of non-native vowels . The ef fects of L1 phonological learning on vowel perception were also observed in the tendency of the Japanese , but not the Korean listeners , to normalize tokens of non-native vowels for speaker-dependent durational variation , consistent with the respective phonological roles of vowel length in Japanese and Korean .
Categorization and production in lexical pitch accent contrasts of North Kyungsang Korean
Phonetics and Speech Sciences, 2018
Categorical production in language processing helps speakers to produce phonemic contrasts. This categorization and production is utilized for the production-based and imitation-based approach in the present study. Contrastive signals in speakers' speech reflect the shapes of boundaries with categorical characteristics. Signals that provide information about lexical pitch accent contrasts can introduce categorical distinctions for productive and cognitive selection. This experiment was conducted with nine North Kyungsang speakers for a production task and nine North Kyungsang speakers for an imitation task. The first finding of the present study is the rigidity of categorical production, which controls the boundaries of lexical pitch accent contrasts. The categorization of North Kyungsang speakers' production allows them to classify minimal pitch accent contrasts. The categorical production in imitation appeared in two clusters, representing two meaningful contrasts. The second finding of the present study is that there are individual differences in speakers' production and imitation responses. The distinctive performances of individual speakers showed a variety of curves. For the HL-LH patterns, the categorical production tended to be highly distinctive as compared to the other pitch accent patterns (HH-HL and HH-LH), showing that there are more continuous curves than categorical curves. Finally, the present study shows that, for North Kyungsang speakers, imitative production is the core type of categorical production for determining the existence of the lexical pitch accent system. However, several questions remain for defining that categorical production, which leads to ideas for future research.