Temporal Organization of English Fricatives in the Speech of Korean Learners of English

Abstract

The present paper investigates the durational patterns of English fricatives /f, v, θ, ð, s, z/ produced by native English speakers and Korean learners of English. The contrasts of voiceless and voiced fricatives, fricative sequence across word boundary, stress placement, and place of articulation were taken into account to identify the durational changes and the durational patterns that are characteristic for Korean learners of English. Example phrases for the production experiment are “say foot” and “safe foot”. The recorded speech was measured to get the durations of the target fricative intervals. The study results show that the variability of the durational patterns is smaller in magnitude and the mean durations in general are longer for Korean learners of English. The speech of Korean learners of English shows that the overlapping and shortening effect for the fricative sequence is greater and the lengthening effect of stress is smaller compared with those in native English speakers’ data. The results of the study are discussed in relation to the phonological contrasts of English and Korean, and some pedagogical implications of the study are presented.