The Comparative Study on the Perception for English and Korean Nasals

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to investigate whether the ‘denasalisation’ of Korean nasals really occurs and, if so, to what extent affects the perceptual identification for the different L1 groups of native Korean and English speakers. Thirty-three Korean and English native speakers took part in the perception experiment on nasals (/m/ and /n/) in three vowel contexts (low, mid, and high) of both languages (Korean and English). The results showed that native English group was more sensitive to effects of vowel height in judging the nasals of both languages, in which the perception of nasals before the high vowels was more subject to it. In addition, place of nasal articulation causes asymmetry relations - that is, bilabial nasal /m/ is more likely than an alveolar nasal /n/ to be perceived as plosives. The study found that the ‘denasalization’ in Korean occurred as the result of the weak acoustic features in the part of nasal murmur, compared with the English nasals. Thus, Koreans who are accustomed to the weak cues tend to identify the nasals of both languages with more precision.