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KMID : 1022420140060010011
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Phonetics and Speech Sciences
2014 Volume.6 No. 1 p.11 ~ p.19
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Perception of English Consonants in Different Prosodic Positions by Korean Learners of English
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Jang Mi
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Abstract
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The focus of this study was to investigate whether there is a position effect on identification accuracy of L2 consonantsby Korean listeners and to examine how Korean listeners perceive the phonetic properties of initial and final consonantsproduced by a Korean learner of English and an English native speaker. Most studies examining L2 learners' perception ofL2 sounds have focused on the segmental level but very few studies have examined the role of prosodic position in L2learners' perception. In the present study, an identification test was conducted for English consonants /p, t, k, f, ?, s, ?/ inCVC prosodic structures. The results revealed that Korean listeners identified syllable-initial consonants more accurately thansyllable-final consonants. The perceptual accuracy in syllable initial consonants may be attributable to the enhanced phoneticproperties in the initial consonants. A significant correlation was found between error rates and F2 onset/offset for stops andfricatives, and between perceptual accuracy and RMS burst energy for stops. However, the identification error patterns werefound to be different across consonant types and between the different language speakers. In the final position, Koreanlisteners had difficulty in identifying /p/, /f/, /?/, and /s/ when they were produced by a Korean speaker and showed moreerrors in /p/, /t/, /f/, /?/, and /s/ when they were spoken by an English native speaker. Comparing to the perception ofEnglish consonants spoken by a Korean speaker, greater error rates and diverse error patterns were found in the perception ofconsonants produced by an English native speaker. The present study provides the evidence that prosodic position plays acrucial role in the perception of L2 segments.
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KEYWORD
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English stops and fricatives, perception of L2 consonants, initial and final consonants
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FullTexts / Linksout information
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