Stop Sounds Research Articles

Kimchi or gimchi? Perceived similarity between Korean lenis and Japanese voiced/voiceless stop sounds

When distinguishing stop consonants, Korean listeners use the fundamental frequency of the following vowel (F0) as well as the voice onset time (VOT). However, it is unclear whether the F0 and VOT of natural speech sounds play an effective role in hearing nonnative stops. In the present study, we examined whether Korean listeners perceive Japanese voiced stops, rather than Japanese voiceless stops, as being similar to Korean lenis stops depending on F0 and VOT. Native Korean listeners matched a speech sound starting with either a Japanese voiced or voiceless stop to a target. The targets were meaningful visual words starting with a lenis stop in Experiment 1 and meaningless speech sounds starting with a lenis stop in Experiment 2. Native Japanese listeners, who primarily use VOT for stop distinction, also participated in Experiment 2. The results revealed that the extent to which Korean listeners chose voiced stops was influenced consistently by F0, and the pattern of results differed between Korean and Japanese listeners. These findings suggest that even when hearing natural speech sounds, Korean listeners use F0 when judging the similarity between lenis and nonnative stops.

Young Pashtun L1 speakers' laryngeal contrast and voicing variation in Korean word-initial stops production

While age proved to have a critical influence on learning L2 phonology, the reason behind it is yet controversial. (brain maturation, LOR, quality l2 input, crib or sequential bilingualism, etc.) This paper examines 6 young people in the same household using Pashtun as their L1. As the elder children arrived in Korea at ages 10, 8, 6, and 3 respectively, the younger two were born in Korea now aged 10 and 8. All family members have equal LOR(10 years except for the youngest), equal L1, and equal L1 and L2 use extent in the home. Examining the differences between VOT and f0 production in these young people will clarify some of the explanations behind the age effects. Moreover, the data reveals the unique L1 transfer phenomena. While Pashtun is a true voicing language, Korean is an aspirating language where all 3- way contrast stops have positive VOT values. This can lead the young people to produce word-initial Korean stops in intersonorant positions with a marked voicing-ratio and to produce allophones that neither exists in their L1 nor in L2 such as voiced aspirated stop sounds ( bɦ, d̪ɦ, gɦ). This paper will also examine whether these young people’s VOT and f0 productions would align with the current tonogenesis like sound change in Korean. This paper used picture naming tasks with easy words instead of reading non-words to not test their grapheme-phoneme correspondences. Each person produces 9 phonemes of word-initial Korean stops (3-way laryngeal contrasts in 3 POA) both in the position in isolation and carrier sentence.

인도네시아인 학습자의 숙달도에 따른 한국어 치경폐쇄음 습득 연구

This study examined the acquisition of Korean stop sounds /t/(ㄷ), /t’/(ㄸ), and /th/(ㅌ) by Indonesian learners of Korean using a behavioral experiment called AX Discrimination Task, and voice production test analyzed by Praat. Nineteen advanced learners and nineteen intermediate learners participated in both tasks. Result of AX discrimination task showed that Indonesian learners were significantly less accurate than native speakers of Korean, and intermediate learners were significantly less accurate than advanced learners in discriminating /t/(ㄷ), /t’/(ㄸ), and /th/(ㅌ). Besides, in terms of reaction time, intermediate learners were the slowest participants in recognizing /t/(ㄷ), /t’/(ㄸ), and /th/(ㅌ). Meanwhile, in the voice production test, both intermediate and advanced learners revealed significant differences in pronouncing /t/(ㄷ), /t’/(ㄸ), and /th/(ㅌ) compared to native Korean. The results of this study showed in perceiving and producing Korean stop sounds /t/(ㄷ), /t’/(ㄸ), and /th/(ㅌ) between the Indonesian learners and native Korean. Overall, this study indicates that in terms of perceiving and producing Korean stop sounds /t/(ㄷ), /t’/(ㄸ), and /th/(ㅌ), and advanced learners shows an increase than intermediate learners, this indirectly proves that lower proficiency predicts lower pronunciation performance as claimed also by Higgs and Cliford’s(1982) on their relative contribution model. This study also revealed similar results with previous studies, where basic, intermediate and advance learners showed significant difference in perceiving and producing Korean stop sounds, while intermediate or advanced learners showed perceiving and producing Korean stop sound that was much closer to that of native Korean(Kim, 2012; Kim, 2006).

An ERP study on the perception of Korean stop sounds /t/, /t’/, and /th/

This study investigated the sound change of aspirated stops in Korea by comparing neural and behavioral responses between younger and older generations of Korean speakers. Neural sensitivities were examined using event-related potentials (ERPs) in four conditions: /t/ vs. /th/, /t/ vs. /t’/, /th/ vs. /t/, and /t’/ vs. /t/. In addition, accuracies and reaction times in an AX discrimination task were measured. A total of 40 Korean native speakers participated in the study: 20 in the younger generation group in their 20 s and 20 in the older generation group in their 50 s. The results were as follows: (i) in the behavioral task, both the younger and the older generations did well at distinguishing aspirated stops from lax stops with high accuracy rates over 90% and similar reaction times, (ii) while the ERP results showed generational differences; mismatch negativity (MMN) was elicited for the aspirated and lax stops distinction only for the older generation, but not for the younger generation. Such group differences were not found for the tense and lax stop distinctions. The findings of this study provide neurophysiological evidence for the ongoing sound change of aspirated stops in Korea.

Comparative Study of Voice Onset Time in English Word-Initial Stop Consonants Produced by Uzbek and American Speakers of English

The purpose of this study is to shed light on a comparative study of Voice Onset Time (VOT) values produced by Uzbek speakers of English and native speakers of American English. The study aimed to determine significant differences in terms of the VOT value in pronunciation of voiced and voiceless stop consonants in word-initial positions. Scholarly sources on the comparative study of Uzbek and English phonetics suggest that most of the Uzbek stop consonants possess similar qualities to those of English stop sounds (Abduazizov 1992; Yusupov 2013). A descriptive comparison of Uzbek and English consonants demonstrates the difference between the two languages in isolated forms rather than in speech. This study is motivated by the fact that little is known about recent studies on the instrumental comparative study of English plosives produced by Uzbek speakers of American English. In addition, so far, no studies have been carried out in VOT analysis of English sounds produced by Uzbek speakers. The research was conducted through voice recording and analyses of data collected from Uzbek speakers and American native speakers. Recordings of 3240 overall tokens were collected and analyzed using Praat phonetic software. The mean VOT values obtained from both subject groups have been compared and statistically tested using the Independent Samples t-test. The research findings show that Uzbek subjects’ and American native subjects’ VOT values differ significantly. However, there are a few words (9 out of 52) where the differences in the VOT values of the two subject groups are not statistically significant. The research presents implications for teaching pronunciation of English plosive sounds in word-initial positions where a stop consonant followed by a vowel sound to Uzbek speakers of English by taking into account the periodic measurement of consonants. In addition, there are implications for future research that might explore other features of VOT produced by Uzbek language speakers. Keywords: Voice Onset Time; stop consonants; voiced; voiceless consonants; Uzbek

The Effect of Malocclusion on Kurdish Young Children’s Production of Dental, Labio-Dental and Alveolar Sounds: A Case study

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the effect of malocclusion on the production of dental, labio-dental, and alveolar fricative and stop consonants. To achieve this purpose, Fifteen Kurdish young children ranging in age from 8-12 years old were selected to participate in the current study. They were distributed over three groups according to their bite-block occlusions. The participants were asked to pronounce isolate fricative and stop sounds and words which include target sounds, and their voices were recorded. Later, the patricians’ audio-recordings were analyzed via a software praat analysis (wave form and sound spectrograph). The main conclusion of the study was that the children with malocclusions had difficulties in producing the inter-dental, labiodental, and alveolar sounds properly. In addition, distocclusion, open-bite and extra orally deep-bite malocclusions were more significant than other types of malocclusions in affecting target sounds production

Descriptive analysis of the development of the Arabic speech sounds among typically developing colloquial Egyptian Arabic-speaking children

BackgroundLiterature only mentioned a few kinds of research that did study the development of the speech sounds of the Colloquial Egyptian Arabic dialect. Moreover, these studies focused on describing the phonological processes that children undergo in early childhood rather than describing the exact time of acquisition of these sounds. Besides, no study involved a statistically enough sample size of children across the different age ranges. Thus, this study aimed to explore the development of the Arabic phonemes among 360 typically developing Egyptian children who speak the CEA dialect, between the ages of 1.6 years and ≤ 7.4 years.ResultsThe results of a 93-picture-naming test of children were analyzed. A phoneme is considered acquired when 90% of the children could properly utter the target phoneme in all word positions and mastered when 100% of children could correctly pronounce the target phoneme in all word positions. The results revealed that by the age of 1.6–2.0 years, the 6 long vowels of the CEA dialect, besides the /h/,/ʔ/, /b/, /w/, /j/, /m/, and /n/ were mastered. /t/ and /d/ sounds were mastered by the age of 2.6 years followed by /l/ sound by the age of 3.0 years. Then, /ħ/, /ʕ/ sounds were mastered followed by /k/, and /g/ at the age of 3.0 and 3.6 years, respectively. At the age of 5.0 years, /f/ sound was mastered, then /x / and /ʃ/ sounds were mastered by the age of 4.6 years, followed by /s/, /sˁ/, /tˁ/, /dˁ/. By the age of 5.6 and 6.0 years, /ɣ/, /r/, and /z/ were mastered. The /q/, /θ/, /ð/, and /ðˁ/ sounds were mastered by the age of 6.0–6.6 years. This study revealed that fricative sounds developed before the stop sounds and front stops before the back stops, and emphatic Arabic sounds were the last to develop at the school age (> 5 years).ConclusionsThis study presented a chart of the development of the Arabic phonemes of the CEA to be used as a guide to decide upon the correct trimming to start articulatory therapy for children with articulation and/or phonological disorders.

¿Entrenamiento perceptivo o instrucción explícita? Percepción y producción de los patrones de voice onset time iniciales del inglés (le) por estudiantes brasileños

En inglés, el voice onset time (vot) desempeña un rol crucial en las distinciones entre oclusivas sordas y sonoras en posición inicial de palabra. La combinación de las prácticas de entrenamiento perceptivo e instrucción explícita ofrece beneficios para la percepción y producción de esos segmentos por estudiantes de inglés. En este trabajo investigamos si la aplicación de cada una de esas técnicas brinda resultados positivos en términos de percepción y de producción de las oclusivas sordas aspiradas /p/, /t/ y /k/. Para ello, participaron 30 estudiantes brasileños de inglés, divididos en tres grupos, cada uno expuesto a diferentes tratamientos. Los participantes realizaron tareas de identificación y producción oral en tres momentos distintos (pretest, postest y postest tardío). Los resultados muestran que el entrenamiento perceptivo promueve mejoras en la percepción, pero no así en la producción. Por su parte, la instrucción explícita con prácticas de producción genera avances en la producción únicamente.

Description and Classification of Balti Consonant Stop Sounds

The study aims to describe and classify consonant stop sounds of the Balti language, which is spoken in Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan. In order to describe and classify these sounds, 120 words were selected from literature written in the Balti language. A purposive sample of 20 Balti speakers from 16 to 35 years of age, who were studying in various degree programs at Government College for Boys, Model Town, Lahore and University of Management and Technology, Lahore, was selected to record possible Balti consonant stop sounds. The physical features of each consonant stop sound were carried through the software package for speech analysis in phonetics. The study reveals that there are 15 consonant stop sounds in the Balti language. The study helps document the Balti language, which follows mostly a verbal tradition like many other languages of the region.

Description and Classification of Balti Consonant Stop Sounds

The study aims to describe and classify consonant stop sounds of the Balti language, which is spoken in Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan. In order to describe and classify these sounds, 120 words were selected from literature written in the Balti language. A purposive sample of 20 Balti speakers from 16 to 35 years of age, who were studying in various degree programs at Government College for Boys, Model Town, Lahore and University of Management and Technology, Lahore, was selected to record possible Balti consonant stop sounds. The physical features of each consonant stop sound were carried through the software package for speech analysis in phonetics. The study reveals that there are 15 consonant stop sounds in the Balti language. The study helps document the Balti language, which follows mostly a verbal tradition like many other languages of the region.

Acoustic analysis of Korean stop sounds in patients with dysarthrias

Purpose Korean ‘stops’ are considered an especially good acoustic variable since they are sensitive to speech intelligibility and reflect physiological coordination between laryngeal and supra-laryngeal mechanisms. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the acoustic characteristics of both the dysarthria and control groups in the production of nine Korean stops, /p, p′, ph, t, t′, th, k, k′, kh/, in VCV contexts. Methods The participants comprised eight patients with dysarthria and eight age- and gender-matched normal adults. After the acoustic analysis of the closure duration, aspiration duration, and the ratio of closure duration to closure-aspiration combined duration, the results were compared among three types of phonation and places of articulation for Korean stops. Results The dysarthria group (DG) had longer closure durations, suggesting slower articulatory movements of the DG than the normal control group (NC). Although statistically not significant except for /ap′a/ and /at′a/, the absolute aspiration durations of the DG were still longer than those of the NC. This resulted in the normal levels of ratios in the DG between closure duration and closure-aspiration combined durations. Furthermore, the DG could change the durational aspects of stop production distinctively according to types of phonation more than they could according to the places of articulation. This trend was more prominent during the closure duration than during the aspiration duration. Conclusions This finding suggested that while the DG has centralized tongue positions, they control the tenseness and the timing coordination between laryngeal and supra-laryngeal articulators to distinctively produce different types of phonation of stops. Keywords: Dysarthria; Acoustic analysis; Korean stops; Closure duration; Aspiration duration

한국어 비음종성[n] 발음 오류 분석: 파키스탄 학습자의 음운 체계를 중심으로

This study examined if Pakistani students can clearly pronounce three distinctive nasal constants of the Korean language or not. For the purpose, total 9 high frequent words from the vocal data of speaking exam which includes the nasal stop sounds of 20 Pakistani students were analyzed: 3 words are from one-syllable words which nasal sounds are (안, 꿈, 명), 3 words are from two-syllable words which nasal sounds in the first place are (안과, 담배, 종교) and 3 words are from two-syllable words which nasal sounds in the last place are (공원, 사람, 고향). The result showed that the Pakistani students can recognize and can clearly distinct and pronounce three nasal conflictive elements of Korean language. But, due to the influence of allophone rules of Urdu nasal alphabet □/noon/[n], some Pakistani students produced ㅇ[ŋ] sound with ㄴ[n] and ㅁ[m] sound with ㄴ[n]. Moreover, Pakistani students omitted final constant while uttering Korean sentences due to the non-existence of final constant in Urdu language. Based on the result of this research, I suggested teaching methods of nasal stop sounds for Pakistani students. The result of this paper could be utilized as a basic data for developing the pronunciation education materials or finding the ways of pronunciation education for Pakistani students. Hereafter, I hope that this paper will play a tiny role in developing the language pronunciation education for Pakistani students.

PRONUNCIATION PROBLEMS OF ENGLISH STOP SOUND MADE BY THE SECOND GRADERS OF SMA PANJURA MALANG

Pronunciation is the most important part in English. As we knows students are always marked by different activities, such as learning activities, private lessons, and course, students can learn better from these activities. This study is aimed to know the pronunciation problems of certain significant English stop sound among the second graders of SMA Panjura Malang and in what position of words the problems occur. This research was a qualitative desctiptive design. The instruments were 50 words, containing voiceless stop of /p/, /t/, /k/ in initial, medial, and final position; each contains five or six intended sounds in different position of words to test the students, and a cell phone to record the pronunciation of the students. The results showed that the most problematic sounds for the students were the aspirated consonants /p/, /t/, /k/ which appeared in initial, medial, and final positions of words. The comparison of both Indonesian and English for the most problematic words showed that one factor that might cause the pronunciation problems of English stop sounds are: (1) there are sounds in English which are phonemic, but they are not phonemic in Indonesian, (2) there are some sounds which do not exist Indonesian, but they exist in English, (3) there are sounds which are voiced in English but they are voiceless in Indonesian, (4) these are sounds pronounced with aspiration in English, but not in Indonesian. Another indication of the cause is the unfamiliarity of the students toward the words. The results are hoped to be the feedback for the teachers to give model in minimal pairs to the students and be able to improve the pronunciation problems of their students.Keywords; pronunciation, segmental sounds, voiceless stop, consonants.

일본인 학습자의 모국어와 음운론적 환경이 한국어 폐쇄음 지각에 미치는 영향

일본인 학습자의 모국어와 음운론적 환경이 한국어 폐쇄음 지각에 미치는 영향

Phonetic Adaptation of Hungarian Loanwords in Romanian

Abstract In current linguistics, as well as in the fields of contact linguistics and sociolinguistics, the assessment of contact between the different languages used by speakers living in the same geographical/political area receives a pronounced role. These languages inevitably come into contact. The research on language contact between Hungarian and Romanian has a past marked by scholarly works that focus especially on the lexical- semantic level. Because contact between linguistic phenomena occurs at every level of language, it is necessary to focus on the smallest linguistic elements as well. In our work, we analyse a corpus of words borrowed from Hungarian by the Romanian language, focusing on stop sounds. In our paper, we establish the main phonetic transfer modalities, discussing the subject in an international framework.

Articulatory Features, Energy, and Sound Pressure of the Voiceless Stop Sounds in English

Articulatory Features, Energy, and Sound Pressure of the Voiceless Stop Sounds in English

Articulatory Features, Energy, and Sound Pressure of the Voiceless Stop Sounds in English

Articulatory Features, Energy, and Sound Pressure of the Voiceless Stop Sounds in English

A Study for the Effect of the Emphaticness and Language and Dialect for Voice Onset Time (VOT) in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA)

The signal sound contains many different features, including Voice Onset Time (VOT), which is a very important feature of stop sounds in many languages. The only application of VOT values is stopping phoneme subsets. This subset of consonant sounds is stop phonemes exist in the Arabic language, and in fact, all languages. The pronunciation of these sounds is hard and unique especially for less-educated Arabs and non-native Arabic speakers. VOT can be utilized by the human auditory system to distinguish between voiced and unvoiced stops such as /p/ and /b/ in English.This search focuses on computing and analyzing VOT of Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), within the Arabic language, for all pairs of non-emphatic (namely, /d/ and /t/) and emphatic pairs (namely, /d?/ and /t?/) depending on carrier words. This research uses a database built by ourselves, and uses the carrier words syllable structure: CV-CV-CV. One of the main outcomes always found is the emphatic sounds (/d?/, /t?/) are less than 50% of non-emphatic (counter-part) sounds ( /d/, /t/).Also, VOT can be used to classify or detect for a dialect ina language.

The Perception of Korean Stops by Heritage and Non-heritage Learners: Pedagogical Implications for Beginning Learners

ABSTRACT This article presents the results from a study of the perception of three-way stop contrasts in Korean by beginning HL and non-HL of Korean. It was expected that American English learners of Korean would have difficulty perceiving the Korean stops because the three-way Korean stop contrast is not found in English. The conclusion is that early HL exposure resulted in better perceptual performance as an adult; also, bilabial stops were perceived better than velar stops or denti-alveolar stops. Pedagogically, HL leaners would need different instructional materials or pedagogical approaches from non-HL leaners. The study focused solely on perception. Nevertheless, we conclude that utilizing production-based as well as perception-based activities will help learners become more aware of the subtle differences that exist between English and Korean stop sounds.

The Perception of Korean Stops by Heritage and Non-heritage Learners: Pedagogical Implications for Beginning Learners

ABSTRACT This article presents the results from a study of the perception of three-way stop contrasts in Korean by beginning HL and non-HL of Korean. It was expected that American English learners of Korean would have difficulty perceiving the Korean stops because the three-way Korean stop contrast is not found in English. The conclusion is that early HL exposure resulted in better perceptual performance as an adult; also, bilabial stops were perceived better than velar stops or denti-alveolar stops. Pedagogically, HL leaners would need different instructional materials or pedagogical approaches from non-HL leaners. The study focused solely on perception. Nevertheless, we conclude that utilizing production-based as well as perception-based activities will help learners become more aware of the subtle differences that exist between English and Korean stop sounds.