Earticle

This study examines the role of F0 in marking the English voicing contrast and different stress types in the speech by native speakers and Korean learners of English. F0 is found as an important acoustic correlate in the Korean laryngeal contrast, suggested as tonogenesis, and thus distinct use of F0 is predicted in the specification of English segmental and suprasegmental features by Korean speakers. Voice Onset Time, voicing duration, and F0 were measured from the speech of 20 native speakers and 55 Korean speakers to measure the acoustic variation. The results confirm the distinctive use of F0 by Korean speakers in comparison to the native English speakers though it is not very systematic. The Korean speakers with deviation from the native speakers tend to use F0 more consistently as an acoustic correlate of the English voicing contrast and lexical stress. The stress difference between compounds and noun phrases is marked mainly by F0 in the group of native speakers whereas the nonnative speakers mark the phrasal accent with higher F0 and longer duration. Finally the Korean subjects tend to mark the sentence stress with different pitch values, but the native speakers seem to specify the focal accent with larger pitch changes in the focused syllable.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of English suprasegmental teaching. For this purpose, eleven Korean speakers’ high-low range difference in F0 and speech time of sentences were measured and analyzed. In addition, vowel duration and pitch of stressed and unstressed vowels were assessed. After that, English suprasegmental characteristics such as intonation, stress and pitch were explained in detail and the subjects’ production changes in the suprasegmental properties were analyzed. The results are as follows. (1) Korean speakers’ high-low range difference in F0 after teaching about suprasegmental characteristics was not significant. However, after practical suprasegmental teaching, the difference increased to a small extent. (2) Speech time of sentences was shorter after teaching. (3) With regard to vowel duration and pitch of stressed vowels, pitch tended to change positively, whereas vowel duration did not. (4) Vowel duration and pitch of unstressed vowels were changed positively even though the change was not significant. These results show that the theoretical explanation of English suprasegmental characteristics is not sufficient to enhance Korean speakers’ pronunciation. thus indicating the necessity of a different solution.

The study aims at examining the role of L1 background language and L2 proficiency level in acquiring the L2 fluency. For the purpose, we investigate acoustical changes of 5 suprasegmental cues by using parameters of the proficiency levels of Japanese and Chinese learners of Korean. Before the experiments, we predict that L2 learners with advanced levels of Korean and L1 background language approximated to the suprasegmental structure of Korean are more likely to acquire L2 Korean fluency. One hundred fifty two subjects with six groups ((Japanese, Mandarin Chinese) * (elementary, intermediate, advanced)) take part in the experiment with native Korean speakers as a control group. The results show that both parameters of the L1 background language and L2 proficiency levels have influence equally on the acquisition of the L2 Korean suprasegmentals. However, the extent is different. For example, the L1 effect decreased over the L2 proficiency levels; the advanced levels of both L1 groups acquired L2 Korean prosody in a similar extent. Also some acoustical cues trigger an uneven influence on Korean natives’ ratings for L2 Korean suprasegmentals; speech rate seems to be the most important cue, whereas the spectrum cues do not.

현대국어의 慶尙方言 또는 中世國語가 聲調言語라는 前提에 대하여 聲調起源論의 입장에서 재검토 해볼 필요가 있다. 현재 韻律類型論의 論議, 上聲의 성격 論議 以前에 聲調의 生成 過程이 있었는가 가 확인되어야 한다. 이를 위해 우선 2章에서 聲調의 定義를 다시 한 번 살펴보고, 類型論 觀點에서 논란이 되는 聲調의 실 현 단위에 대한 논의를 하였다. 이를 확대하여 3章에서는 聲調와 音高의 비교, 최소대립쌍의 확인 등 을 통해 聲調言語의 必要充分條件이 현대국어의 慶尙方言 또는 中世國語에서 확인될 수 있는지를 검 토해보았다. 4章에서는 중세국어의 傍點이 당시 聲調의 表記라는 주장에 대해 聲調의 發生 측면에서 그 필요성을 논의하였는데, 傍點 表記의 소멸이 곧 聲調의 소멸로 보는 것은 聲調와 傍點을 일체화한 잘못이라고 할 수 있다. 결론적으로 중세국어나 현대 국어의 慶尙方言에 존재하는, 제한된 최소대립쌍(a minimal pair)에서 확인할 수 있는 音高의 대립은 强勢에 덧붙은 聲調로 볼 수 있을 것이다.

Most of the tone-related research in Korea based on the premise that the Mid-Korean and some dialects of the modern Korean were a tonal language and also they are focused on whether it is the true tonal language or the pitch accent language. However, the goal of linguistics have to explain why it may be, than to classify it based on the characteristics of the type of language. In this paper I argue for a tonogenesis-driven approach to identify the natures of Korean tone system. Rather than seeking to classify or label languages, the central goal of linguistics is to determine how different natures of tone systematize the phonetic substance available to the Mid -Korean and some dialects of the modern Korean. The paper focuses on the definition of tone-syllable morphemes, not every unit of a broad representation of lexical tone recognition that having a distinctive character as a small second articulation integral relationship between family relationships and attitudes is needed that includes both. The most necessary and sufficient condition for the control of pitch except the contrastive feature, is a distinctive feature. The primary purpose of bangjum(side dot) in Mid-Korean was that is expressed sino-Korean in Chinese tone system and the demise of the bangjum(side dot) can be said to be wrong. It may be seen the loss of one position of need because Korean tone system did not doing an actual functionality or were not distinctive features at the time of the Middle Ages in Korea. In sum, Korean has a stress system, which happens to be realized in terms of non-obligatory, non-culminative H tone (as well as by other means, e.g. lengthening of a vowel). In other words, Korean tone system offers a case of where tone is superimposed on stress, someth ing which might be designated as metrical tone system for convenience.

Kang, Seokhan. 2013. The Effect of the Background Language on L2 Suprasegmental Acquisition. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 38-1, 1-26. This study investigated how the different L1 adult groups with different levels of proficiency levels acquire the L2 suprasegmentals. Sixty-four subjects in seven groups – twenty-eight native English learners of Korean with three different leveled groups, twenty-six native Japanese learners of Korean with three different leveled groups, and ten native Korean speakers (as a control group) – took part in the experiment. After L2 subjects’ speech was assessed by ten native Korean listeners, acoustic measurement of L2 speaking was analyzed. The results show that both effects of L1 background language and L2 proficiency levels influence differently in the acquisition of the L2 suprasegmentals. More specifically, the effect of L1 background language impacts on the quality of L2 acquisition more strongly in the early stage; Japanese learners produced Korean prosody more fluently in the beginning level of the proficiency. However, L1 effect diminished in the later stage of L2 experience. The mitigation of L1 effect results from the cue asymmetry which the typological proximity triggers. (Seoul National University)

This paper provides a connectionist analysis of the prosodic structure of a non-standard variety of French, using the framework of Dynamic Computational Networks. I develop a corpus-based analysis of schwa in this variety and propose that its behaviour stems from its inability to project from the syllabic to the metrical level. The model shows that a significant portion of the lexical prosodic structure of southern French can be learned from data without needing prosodic constituency.

English stress is realized by suprasegmental features such as duration, pitch, and intensity as well as by vowel quality. It has been known that native speakers of English are more attentive to vowel reduction than to suprasegmental cues because it offers considerable processing advantages (Fear et al. 1995, Cutler 2015). However, it has been shown that this is challenging for L2 learners of English, who depend on suprasegmental features in their production (Hammond 1986, Lee et al. 2006). Assuming that this difficulty is ascribed to their misperception, we examined how Korean listeners perceive English stress by modulating vowels at the segmental and the suprasegmental levels. Consistent with previous studies (Chung 2016a, 2016b, Kang & Kim 2016), Korean listeners relied heavily on pitch, but were also sensitive to vowel reduction, whose effect was stronger in the high proficiency group. For English native listeners, vowel reduction was the most reliable cue, but those who have been exposed to Korean accents for long time did not exploit vowel reduction for stress placement. The results suggest that phonetic/phonological patterns at the segmental level are more easily acquired than those at the suprasegmental level (Saito 2018).

Segmental sounds are divided units, which include consonants and vowels. In contrast, suprasegmental sounds cannot be separated into individual elements, and express prominence relationship. They consist of syllable, stress, intonation, pitch, length, and juncture. Since the segmentals are concrete, we have paid much attention to them. However, the suprasegmentals have been scarcely dealt with because they are abstract entities. Furthermore, consonants and vowels exist in all languages, whereas the identical suprasegmentals do not appear in them. Nevertheless, the suprasegmentals have an important function to differentiate meaning. As in many other languages, Korean has the segmentals and suprasegmentals. Although no distinctive suprasegmentals exist in Korean, they are useful elements for meaning difference. This paper discusses the segmentals and suprasegmentals in Korean, and indicates that juncture in Korean suprasegmentals plays an important role in differentiating meaning. Also, I try to suggest how to teach the segmentals and suprasegmentals in Korean language education.

This paper investigates the acoustic-perceptual relation between Korean dent-alveolar fricatives and the English voiceless alveolar fricative /s/ in varied prosodic contexts (e.g., stress, accent, and word initial position). The denti-alveolar fricatives in Korean show a two-way distinction, which can be referred to as either plain (lenis) /s/ or fortis /$s^*$/. The English alveolar voiceless fricative /s/ that corresponds to the two Korean fricatives would be placed in a one-to-two non-native phoneme mapping situation when Korean listeners hear English /s/. This raises an interesting question of how the single fricative of English perceptually maps into the two-way distinction in Korean. This paper reports the acoustic-perceptual mapping pattern by investigating spectral properties of the English stimuli that are heard as either /s/ or /$s^*$/ by Korean listeners, in order to answer the two questions: first, how prosody influences fricatives acoustically, and second, how the resultant properties drive non-native listeners to interpret them as segmental features instead of as prosodic information. The results indicate that Korean listeners' responses change depending on the prosodic context in which the stimuli are placed. It implies that Korean speakers interpret some of the information provided by prosody as segmental one, and that the listeners take advantage of the information in their judgment of non-native phonemes.

This study investigated the cross-directional development of L2 fluency in the production of suprasegmental features by the effect of immersion and the L2 learners’ group. L2 learners of native English and Korean, with two different lengths of immersion, were compared and analyzed cross-linguistically. It was hypothesized that the longer-immersed groups of L2 learners would show suprasegmental features more similar to those of native speakers than the shorterimmersed learners. Both groups?English learners of Korean and Korean learners of English?with different immersion levels were examined to test the hypothesis. The results proved that the longer-immersed L2 groups produced acoustic signals similar to those of L1 native speakers, along with higher fluency scores than those of the short-immersed counterparts. However, some distinctive features can be found in that the longer-immersed groups have difficulty adjusting spectral cues. As a result, both groups exhibited acoustic characteristics with universal as well as individual acquisition patterns following the effects. The similar features are realized in the temporal cues such as speech rate and pause duration, while the particular features are found in the spectral cues. The results suggest that L2 development is influenced by both universal L2 development factors and distinctive groups of L2 learners.

The present study tested if individual speakers showing great sound change in segments (i.e., vowels and fricatives) also had innovative changing patterns in suprasegmental properties (i.e., lexical pitch accents) in Kyungsang Korean. The acoustic analysis at a group level first confirmed the presence of group level differences in distinguishing /ɨ-ʌ/ and /s-s'/ both of which had different phonemic distinction from Seoul Korean. Younger speakers had more innovative segmental change than older speakers, and even within the younger generation, female speakers produced more innovative phonetic variants than male speakers. Regarding the individual observation within the younger group, the younger speakers with large acoustic distinction in vowels and fricatives also showed acoustically less distinct accent patterns, indicating the innovative sound change pattern consistent across segment and suprasegmental properties. The group and individual observations suggested that linguistic innovators introduced new phonetic variants with consistent degree of changing pattern between segment and suprasegmental properties.

Характеризуя русский и корейский языки в рамках фонологической типологии, следует отметить следующее. В обоих языках можно проследить универсальные типологические и уникальные специфические черты. Так, системы сегментов обоих языков носят консонанти-ческий характер. Однако консонантизм русского языка, за сче?т палатализованных согласных, богаче консонантизма корейского языка: состав фонем русского языка включает 36 единиц, в отличие от кореи?ского языка, состав согласных фонем которого насчитывает 23 единицы. Кроме того, в русском языке, благодаря позиционным и комбинаторным модификациям гласных фонем в составе слова и функциональной нагруженностью в грамматике (в составе флексий) и артикуляционной базе, все же наблюдается высокая роль вокализма. Русскому языку, относящемуся к индоевропейским языкам, в отличие от корейского (представителя алтайской языковой семьи), присуща иррелевантность слога и слогоделения при несовпадении слоговых и морфемных границ, наличие неслоговых морфем, морфем больше или меньше слога и наличие ресиллабации. В корейском языке, в свою очередь, как и во многих языках, входящих в алтайскую семью, наблюдается явление гармонии гласных или сингармонизм, не свойственное русскому языку. Далее можно отметить акцентный тип организации русского слова с многосложными ритмическими моделями, разноместным и подвижным многофункциональным ударением, которое сопровождается регулярной редукцией безударных гласных, взаимодействием главного и второстепенного ударений в словоформе и тексте. Вопрос о типе ударения в корейском языке довольно сложный. Долгое время корейский относили к языкам анакцент-ным, однако данная характеристика, на наш взгляд, не является верной и не может в полной мере отразить особенности просодического устройства корейского языка. То же касается и вопроса интонации. Интонационный рисунок обоих языков достаточно богат. К общим универсальным характеристикам интонационных систем можно отнести изменение мелоди-ческого контура. В целом же вопросы интонационной специфики разработаны недостаточно полно и в существующих работах наблюдаются разногласия. Сопоставление и выявление универсальных и спец ...

The purpose of this study was to examine effects of second language (L2) immersion experiences in a Korean-speaking environment for American English learners of Korean. To accomplish this research purpose, the following hypothesis is constructed; a native English group of learning Korean who had immersed for a longer period as adults would have suprasegmental features, maintaining a greater resemblance to those of native Korean speakers. Seventy participants, divided into four groups(a long-, mid-, short-term immersed group, and 10 native Korean speakers), were asked to produce oral outputs for the evaluation of suprasegmental features of Korean. In general, the longer group was more native-like by having a faster speech rate as well as a comparatively shorter pause duration, smaller pause frequency, and longer duration of the sentence-final syllable. However, the F0 range exerted somewhat different developmental patterns among the groups. These results suggest that even if the acquisition of L2 prosody is affected by the amount of immersion experience, these cues could be developed differently, in which some F0-related cues proved not to be paralleled with other durational ones.

This study investigated how the different L1 adult groups with different levels of proficiency levels acquire the L2 suprasegmentals. Sixty-four subjects in seven groups ? twenty-eight native English learners of Korean with three different leveled groups, twenty-six native Japanese learners of Korean with three different leveled groups, and ten native Korean speakers (as a control group) ? took part in the experiment. After L2 subjects’ speech was assessed by ten native Korean listeners, acoustic measurement of L2 speaking was analyzed. The results show that both effects of L1 background language and L2 proficiency levels influence differently in the acquisition of the L2 suprasegmentals. More specifically, the effect of L1 background language impacts on the quality of L2 acquisition more strongly in the early stage; Japanese learners produced Korean prosody more fluently in the beginning level of the proficiency. However, L1 effect diminished in the later stage of L2 experience. The mitigation of L1 effect results from the cue asymmetry which the typological proximity triggers.

This study compares native and nonnative listeners’ assessments of L2 speech produced by Korean learners of English in terms of six pronunciation features: intonation, stress, reduced speech, linking, individual sounds, and consonant clusters. Speech samples from fifteen advanced English learners were recorded and then rated by native and nonnative listeners. The results show that nonnative listeners provide higher ratings for L2 speech than native listeners for all of the features except individual sounds. For three suprasegmental features ? intonation, stress, and reduced speech ? nonnative listeners’ ratings are significantly higher than those of native listeners, indicating that suprasegmental features are less salient to nonnative listeners than to native listeners. The native listeners also point out that overall, the L2 speech samples sound flat and unnatural due to the lack of appropriate intonation and stress. Considering that in L2 speech pronunciation the role of prosodic or suprasegmental features outweighs that of segmental sounds, the focus on suprasegmental features needs to be increased in L2 pronunciation instruction.

This study examines how Korean-speaking learners of English produce English word stress in comparison to native English speakers. Participants were trained with nonword stress-minimal pairs (e.g., /?k?næd?au/ vs. /k??næd?u/) that do not carry reduced vowels in unstressed syllables. Acoustic-phonetic analyses on the suprasegmental and segmental correlates of English word stress revealed that Korean-speaking learners of English were very similar to native English speakers in their production of suprasegmental cues, with longer duration, higher fundamental frequency (F0), and greater intensity in stressed syllables than in unstressed syllables. However, compared to native English speakers, Korean speakers produced smaller vowel spaces. In addition, unlike native English speakers who often reduced vowels in unstressed syllables (e.g., schwa and its variants), Korean-speaking learners of English didn’t make significant vowel quality change in unstressed syllables. These findings indicate that, even with the exposure to L2 English dominant environment, Korean speakers’ production of English word stress is still influenced by L1 phonology at both suprasegmental and segmental levels.

본고는 한국인 학습자의 스페인어 발화시 나타나는 분절음과 초분절음의 특성을 연구하였다. 주어진 단어와 문장읽기, 자유주제에 대한 말하기 데이터를 바탕으로 분절음과 초분절음 발화에서 나타나는 오류를 관찰하고, 이를 유형화하여 제시하였다. 이 중 초분절음 특성에 해당한다고 볼 수 있는 재음절화 특징 또한 관찰하였는데, 중급 이상 수준의 스페인어 구사자들도 읽기 과제에서 재음절화를 실현하는 경우가 드물었다. 자유발화의 경우, 발화 중간에 휴지가 삽입되거나 짧은 구에 피치악센트를 적용하게 되면, 재음절화 현상이 나타나기 더욱 어려웠다. <한정사 + 명사> 구조나 <전치사 + 관사 + 명사> 구조에서는 재음절화가 일어나는 경우가 있었는데, 이 현상은 해당 발화자가 상대적으로 고급 수준의 화자임을 알 수 있게 하는 하나의 표지로 볼 수 있다고 본고에서는 주장하였다. 인공지능 음성인식 기술의 급격한 발달과 더불어 국내에서 한국인 학습자의 외국어 음성데이터 베타버전이 구축되었고, 국내외에서 음성데이터에 대한 관심이 크게 높아졌다. 학습자의 발음과 말하기 평가를 자동화할 수 있는 모델을 생성하거나, 학습자의 음성을 인식하는 기술 발전에 바탕이 되는 기초작업이 이루어지고 있는 것이다. 향후 발음과 말하기 평가를 자동화하게 된다면, 학습자 음성데이터 강제정렬 기술도 더 안정화 되어야 하는 등 거쳐야 할 단계가 있겠다. 본고에서 제시한 분절음과 초분절음 오류 유형이 이러한 단계를 확립하는데 기여할 수 있기를 바라고, 이와 동시에 한국인 학습자의 스페인어 발음과 억양 습득과 연습에 도움이 되길 기대해 본다.

This paper studied the characteristics of segmental and suprasegmental features in Korean learners’ Spanish speech. Errors in segmental and supersegmental features were observed based on oral data on given words and sentences and answers to free topics. After reviewing the types of errors, we categorized them to present as a rubric. Among them, resyllabifications were also observed, even though the rate of resyllabifications in reading tasks was very low for speakers of intermediate or higher levels. In the case of free speech, when pauses are inserted in the middle of speech or pitch accents are applied to short phrases, the resyllabification is more difficult to appear. Resyllabifications occurred relatively more in the structure of <determiner + noun> or <preposition + article + noun>. Therefore, these marks played a role in classifying the speaker as an advanced learner. Along with the rapid development of artificial intelligence voice recognition technology, a beta version of foreign language voice data for Korean learners was built in Korea, and interest in voice data has dramatically increased. The foundational work is creating a model that can automate the evaluation of learners' pronunciation and speaking or developing a technology that recognizes the learners' voices. Suppose the pronunciation and speaking evaluation is automated in the future. In that case, steps will be taken, such as the technology for forced alignment of the learner's voice data to be further stabilized. It is hoped that the segmental and suprasegmental error types presented in this paper can contribute to establishing these steps and, at the same time, help Korean learners acquire and practice Spanish pronunciation and intonation.

The purpose of this study is to investigate which pronunciation feature of Korean high school students’ English (segmentals or suprasegmentals) is a more critical factor in native speakers’ comprehension, especially according to students’ English levels, and then, based on this result, establish pronunciation teaching and learning priorities. For this purpose, this study was designed to extend the work of previous researches (Park and Park, 2014; Park, 2015) on correlation among segmentals, suprasegmentals, and perceived comprehensibility. Speech samples from sixty high school students, mixed-level, were collected and analyzed according to English level, using SPSS 12.0. The results clarified that for the beginner-level group, segmentals have a great influence on the comprehensibility of their English pronunciation. However, for the advanced group of students, suprasegmentals are more influential than segmentals in terms of native speakers’ comprehension. This finding indicates that the priorities of learning and teaching pronunciation should be determined in consideration of students’ English levels: for beginner-levels, particular emphasis should be placed on segmental features and for advanced-levels, suprasegmentals should be stressed more than segmentals in order for them to acquire more comprehensible pronunciation. In addition, the finding in this study about the advanced group is in line with Park and Park (2014)’s study, but it is contrary to Park (2015)’s research. It is assumed that in case of Park (2015)’s research, subjects were Korean EFL teachers of English, so their English ability may be far beyond the average Korean students.