Tense Consonants Research Articles

베트남 학습자들의 한국어 읽기에 나타난 자음 발음 오류

The purpose of this paper is to examine pronunciation errors in Vietnamese learners’ reading and analyze their causes. Above all, this paper will identify possible errors through contrastive analysis and language transfer to find out what the errors are and find their causes. Since most errors are fundamentally caused by structural differences between the two languages, this paper will analyze their causes through the differences and similarities between Korean and Vietnamese. Among them, this paper would like to discuss the transfer and difficulties from the perspective of contrastive analysis based on pronunciation errors in the tense consonants and tensified consonants of Korean, liquids and the nasalization of the liquid consonant, and voiced consonants and palatalizations in Korean, which are considered difficult for Vietnamese students. First, liquid nasalization errors turned out to be the most difficult for Vietnamese students. This is especially closely related to transfer and seems to have arisen from the tendency to pronounce the original Vietnamese 'ㄹ' [l] as it is. Second, in the case of tense and tensified consonants, tensified consonant process shows more errors than tense consonants. Third, because the final consonant 'l' is not allowed in Vietnamese, there is an error in pronouncing 'l' as 'n' when pronouncing Korean. Fourth, Korean consonants are basically voiceless. However, voiceless consonants between voiced sounds are pronounced as voiced. However, because Vietnamese has both voiced and voiceless sounds, there is the possibility of Korean voiceless sounds being pronounced as voiced. It was even observed that ‘kyotong’ (traffic) was pronounced [gyodong] or [g’yodong]. In conclusion, this paper shows that the differences between the two languages have a significant influence on language errors. To overcome this, it can be said that it is more efficient for language acquisition to reduce the influence of transfer and allow students to recognize the differences and similarities between the two languages through learning.

베트남인의 한국어 폐쇄음 산출에 대한 한국인의 지각 연구

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the perception patterns of Koreans regarding the production of Korean stop consonants by Vietnamese Korean language learners. For this purpose, an experiment was conducted on Koreans' perception of Vietnamese learners’ production of Korean stop consonants.
 The results of the experiment show that when the presentation sound is located at the beginning of the word, the correct answer rate was ‘/ㅌ/ 89%) > /ㅋ/(88%) > /ㅍ/=/ㅂ/(84%) > /ㄱ/=/ㄸ/(74%) ) > /ㄷ/(72%) > /ㅃ/(65%) > /ㄲ/(61%)', and in the case of word-medial onset consonants, ’/ㅍ/, /ㅋ/(91%) > /ㅌ /(88%) > /ㄷ/(68%) > /ㅂ/(61%) > /ㄸ/(60%) > /ㄲ/(51%) > /ㅃ/(46%) > /ㄱ/(40%)’. Except for the case of /ㄸ/ in word-initial and /ㄱ/ in word-medial, accuracy was found to be high in the order of aspirated consonants > plain consonants > tense consonants for both word-initial and word-medial positions. The percentage of correct responses in the word-initial environment was higher than that in the word-medial environment, and this was revealed more clearly through matrix analysis. In both word-initial and word-medial environments, when the target sound was ‘plain’, it was confused with ‘tense’, when it was ‘tense’ it was confused with ‘aspirated’, and when it was ‘aspirated’ it was confused with ‘plain’. Looking at the correct rate for each following vowel, except for the word-medial plain consonant (/ㅣ/ > /ㅜ/ > /ㅏ/), in all other cases, the correct rate was high in the order of /ㅣ/ > /ㅏ/ > /ㅜ/. This result shows that the correct response rate for the following vowels decreases as the vowels move from the front vowels to the back vowels.

Oral diadochokinetic production in children with typical speech development and speech-sound disorders.

AIMS: To investigate the developmental trajectory of the rate and perceptual assessment of oral diadochokinesis (DDK) in typically developing children compared with adults. Also to examine the characteristics of DDK productions in children with speech sound disorders (SSD) and the relationship between DDK production and percentage of consonants correct (PCC). Participants were 316 typically developing children and 90 children with SSD from 3 to 9 years old, as well as 20 adults with normal speech. The mono-, bi- and trisyllabic nonsense strings containing Korean tense consonants and the vowel [a] were used for DDK tasks. The number of iterations per s was measured as the DDK rate for each stimulus. The perceptual assessment of DDK productions was also performed for regularity, accuracy and rate. The DDK rates increased throughout childhood, but the oldest children, 9-year-olds in the current study, did not achieve adult-like rates for all mono- and trisyllabic strings. Children with SSD also did not show significant differences from typically developing children when the DDK productions were analysed using only accurate tokens. The PCC of children with SSD showed higher correlations with regularity, accuracy and rate of perceptual ratings than the timed DDK rate. This study highlighted the fact that the comprehensive evaluation of DDK productions may provide even more useful information about children's oral motor skills. What is already known on the subject Rates of DDK reflect the motor skills of the articulatory systems independently of phonological skills; therefore, the tasks are widely used in the diagnostic evaluations of speech disorders in both children and adult populations. However, a substantial number of studies have questioned the validity and usefulness of DDK rates for evaluating speech abilities. Also, the literature suggested that the measure of DDK rate alone does not provide a clear and useful indication of children's oral motor skills. DDK tasks should be analysed in terms of accuracy and consistency as well as rate. What this paper adds to the existing knowledge The literature reporting normative DDK performance has mainly been based on English speakers. As different consonants have different temporal characteristics, the linguistic and segmental features of DDK tasks can impact the DDK rate. This study established a norm for DDK rate for Korean-speaking children and investigated the developmental trajectory of DDK performance in typically developing children compared with adults. This study suggested that the comprehensive evaluation of DDK productions may provide even more useful information about children's oral motor skills by examining the characteristics of DDK productions in children with SSD. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? This study provided normative data of young Korean-speaking children aged 3-9 years. Normative data in children under 5 years of age are valuable given that the majority of children referred for speech difficulty assessments are between 3 and 5 years of age, but only a few studies have provided the normative data in young children. This study showed that many children could not complete DDK tasks correctly and provided additional support for the notion that other aspects of DDK performance, including accuracy and regularity, may yield more useful diagnostic indications than timed DDK rates alone.

베트남인 화자의 한국어 자음 발음 오류 - 결혼이주여성의 자유발화를 대상으로 -

This study analyzed Vietnamese speakers’ production of Korean consonants and the pronunciation errors that occurred. For this study, I collected natural utterances from 26 Vietnamese marriage immigrant women in Korea. The results of this study indicate that Vietnamese speakers have difficulty distinguishing lax from tense consonants at word-initial onset position and aspirated consonants from others at word-medial onset position. At coda position, the most frequent occurrence was that the lateral /l/ was replaced with the nasal /n/. This is mainly due to the difference between phonemic systems of the speaker’s native tongue and Korean. Because there is no discrimination between lax and tense consonants, and the lateral /l/ is not allowed at coda position in the phonemic system of Vietnamese. However, phonemic correspondence between first language and second language can not account for all the observed errors. For example, /n, m, ŋ/ at coda positions were often confused in place of articulation even though the phonemic system of their native tongue has the consonants corresponding to each nasal.

한국어 평음 경음 격음의 지각과 산출-중국어권 학습자를 중심으로-

This study investigates how Chinese learners of Korean perceive and produce Korean lax, tense and aspirated consonants and how the perception and production are related. For this purpose an experiment was conducted in production and perception of Korean consonants with ten Chinese participants who were learning the Korean language for less than six months. According to the result, the Chinese participants had difficulties in perceiving Korean lax, aspirated, tense consonants in order and difficulties in producing Korean lax, tense and aspirated consonants in order. However, it is certain that there is correlation in perceiving and producing Korean tense consonants. In the experiment, most Chinese learners perceive Korean lax consonants as Korean aspirated consonants and produced them as Korean tense consonants. They mostly perceived Korean tense consonants as Korean lax consonants and produced them as Korean aspirated consonants. They perceived Korean aspirated consonants as Korean lax consonants and produce them as Korean lax consonants or as tense consonants.

韓国語ソウル方言の平音・激音・濃音の先行母音および後続母音における高さ，強さ，フォルマントの時間的変化

韓国語ソウル方言の平音・激音・濃音の先行母音および後続母音における高さ，強さ，フォルマントの時間的変化

한국어 음운인식에서의 조음거리와 긴장성 자질의 특성 연구: 영·유아를 중심으로

This study tried to investigate the differences between auditory preferences for a discrimination study of minimal pairs with the different onset and the same nucleus of a syllable on the basis of articulator-distance in case of Korean infants and toddlers. As a result we found a main effect for articulator-distance and age but not an effect according to the types of phonation especially in terms of tense. Former results are line with the previous studies having reported the order of consonants acquisition based on the places of articulation suggesting that more sensitive responses for the contiguous and different phonemes may lead earlier acquisition for the same place of articulation of the speech sounds. Specifically, bilabial soudns are followed by alveolar and palatal sounds in order. The latter results also showed that tense consonants got a high rate of recognition beside lax consonants according to the age and sex.

Tonogenesis in contemporary Korean with special reference to the onset-tone interaction and the loss of a consonant opposition

Recent studies show that, besides their effect on the fundamental frequency (f0) contour of the following vowel, Korean stops are undergoing a sound change in which a partial or completer voice onset time (VOT) merger is taking place between aspirated and lax stops. The purpose of this study is to see whether the sound change holds across the three major dialects of Korea (Seoul, Pusan, and Gwangju). The three acoustic parameters, VOT, f0, and H1-H2, were examined. The results show that the effects of onsets on f0 (i.e., onset-tone interaction) were robust across dialects whereas the merging of aspirated and lax stops was not. With respect to H1-H2, lax consonants showed higher breathiness than aspirated counterparts whereas tense consonants did not. With respect to VOT, most aspirated and lax stops were produced with long-lag voicing whereas tense stops were produced with short-lag voicing. However, interspeaker variations were noticeable even within each dialect, indicating that the sound change is still ongoing among Korean speakers. The phenomena correspond to typical tonogenesis properties, characterized by onset-tone interaction and merging of a consonantal opposition. The findings suggest that the sound change in contemporary Korean can be viewed as undergoing tonogenesis.

The underlying representation of tense consonants in Korean revisited: A government approach

The underlying representation of tense consonants in Korean revisited: A government approach

Closure duration of plosives and the underlying representation of tense consonants in Korean

Closure duration of plosives and the underlying representation of tense consonants in Korean

Dimensions in Korean Laryngeal Phonology*

The often-cited phenomenon of ‘‘post-obstruent tensing’’ in Korean is taken here to be primarily a skeletal strengthening rather than a feature accretion. On this view, a tense consonant in Korean phonologically fills two skeletal timing slots, i.e., forms a geminate, and the fact that it is articulated with a discernable degree of tension, or glottal constriction, derives from the effects of a surface embellishment which (amending Avery and Idsardi, 2001). We term Korean Enhancement. The special quality of Korean tense consonants then is that they are phonological geminates phonetically augmented with the laryngeal dimension of Glottal Width, which implicates a gesture of glottal constriction; elsewhere, i.e., in singletons, the default gesture for a Glottal Width specification is that of a spread glottis, which results in heavy aspiration in the phonemically aspirated series. A further requirement that the Laryngeal node be structurally bipositional accounts for the celebrated syllable-final neutralizations (monopositional coda obstruents necessarily simplify to lax stops, which have no specified Laryngeal structure) as well as for the appearance of raised pitch on vowels following either tense or aspirated obstruents but not laryngeally empty lax ones (Jun (1993).

"Tense" and "Lax" Stops in Korean

Korean is thought to be unique in having three kinds of voiceless stops: aspirated /ph th kh/, tense /p* t* k*/, and lax /p t k/. The contrast between tense and lax stops raises two theoretical problems. First, to distinguish them either a new feature [tense] is needed, or the contrast in voicing (or aspiration) must be increased from two to three. Either way there is a large increase in the number of possible stops in the world's languages, but the expansion lacks support beyond Korean. Second, initial aspirated and tense consonants correlate with a high tone, and lax and voiced consonants correlate with a low tone. The correlation cannot be explained in the standard tonogenesis model (voiceless-high and voiced-low). We argue instead that (a) underlyingly "tense" stops are regular voiceless unaspirated stops, and "lax" stops are regular voiced stops, (b) there is no compelling evidence for a new distinctive feature, and (c) the consonant-tone correlation is another case of voiceless-high and voiced-low. We conclude that Korean does not have an unusual phonology, and there is no need to complicate feature theory.

Does early speaking experience in Korean help adult relearners?

Research indicates that early linguistic input is crucial for acquiring native-like phonology and morphosyntax. This study investigates whether early discontinued linguistic experience helps adult relearners master the phonology of a language. Students from first-year Korean classes were classified into three groups: no/minimal speaking experience, childhood speaking experience (until about age 5), and native speakers. Native speakers not enrolled in Korean classes also participated. Participants produced sentences that included words utilizing the three-way contrast in Korean stop consonants (lenis, tense, and aspirated). Measurements of stop closure duration indicate that only the two native speaker groups were differentially producing lenis and tense consonants. Measurements of VOT indicate that only the childhood and the native speaker groups were differentially producing the three consonants. Furthermore, the childhood speakers’ general pattern of closure duration and VOT for the three consonants was similar to those of the native speakers (this was not true for the no/minimal experience group). Results indicate that even early discontinued speaking experience can provide an advantage in relearning a language as an adult. [Work supported by an NIMH Developmental Cognitive Science Training Grant awarded to Janet Oh, and by NIMH Grant MH56118 and a UCLA Academic Senate Grant awarded to Terry Au.]

The Interaction between Consonant Types and Tone of the Chonnam Dialect of Korean

CINITIAL has the strongest effect on F0 among the four factors in cases of both pooled and individual data. Such an effect indicates that there is a strong correlation between the initial consonant type and tone: H following aspirated and tense consonants and LH following other consonants. Vowel has also an effect on F0 throughout the three temporal locations but its effect is much weaker than that of CINITIAL in size (Hz). However, the effect of Length and CFINAL on F0 is found to be almost negligible. Interactions between factors are found to be due to sporadic - presumably is linguistically unimportant - effects rather than to systematic difference. A more through phonetic study suggests that there is a strong correlation between consonant types and tone, confirming Jun's earlier observation. For the fact that consonant types correlated with tone, the phonological discussion of Jun's analysis and an alternative analysis is provided. Jun explains the consonant type-tone interaction in terms of the phonologization of laryngeal effect at an intonational level of Korean phonology. However, in Jun's analysis, it still remains clear why there is a correlation if the laryngeal effect is phonologized. Contrary to Jun, the consonant types-tone interaction is well accounted for in the alternative analysis in terms of the voice hypothesis that lax consonants are underlyingly voiced. This interpretation has potential implications for tonogenesis.