The purpose of this study is to investigate how inter-language similarities or heterogeneity influence the acquisition of Korean vowels by native Chinese speakers, based on acoustic phonetics perspectives as well as comparing and contrasting the simpl...
The purpose of this study is to investigate how inter-language similarities or heterogeneity influence the acquisition of Korean vowels by native Chinese speakers, based on acoustic phonetics perspectives as well as comparing and contrasting the simple vowels of Korean and Chinese languages.
First of all, 7 Korean vowels and 8 Chinese vowels were recorded from 15 male Koreans and 15 male Chinese for the production test. Then, Praat was used to measure and compare the mean values of F1 and F2, followed by statistical analysis using SPSS 12.0. Based on the result of the analysis, Korean vowels and Chinese vowels were classified into 3 categories -‘the same sound’, ‘similar sound’, and ‘new sound’- according to Flege’s(1995) SLM. [a] and [e] were assigned to the category of ‘the same sound’. [i], [o], [u] and [？-？] were assigned to the group of ‘similar sound’ and [？-？], [？-？] were assigned for the group of ‘new sound’. In addition, a hierarchical of difficulty in learning Korean simple vowels by native Chinese speaker was set, according to Prator’s(1967) hierarchy of language learning difficulty. [a, e, i, o] were assigned to level 0 of difficulty; [？] was set to level 1 of difficulty; [u] was set to level 3 of difficulty; and finally, [？] was set to level 4 of difficulty. The aforementioned classifications and hierarchical of difficulty formed the theoretical foundation upon which this experiment explored the characteristics of a native Chinese speaker’s acquisition of Korean vowels and analyzed the errors.
In addition to comparing and contrasting each vowel, this study compared the acoustic vowel space of main vowels such as [i, a, u, e, o] for more precise comparison of vowel between two languages. Specifically, the Euclidian distance between vowels of [i, a, u], which exists across languages, such as the triangle area among them, the square area among them and vowel [e], as well as the pentagon area among them and vowel [o], were compared to discover the linguistic differences between the two languages on acoustic vowel space. The results were statistically significant within the Euclidian distance. In other words, the Chinese language is longer than that of the Korean language, and areas of vowel from Chinese are bigger than those of Korean including all triangle, square, and pentagon areas of vowel. These areas are all identical in native Chinese’s pronunciation of Korean vowels.
Second, a production test and perception test were conducted to investigate the acquisition of Korean vowels by native Chinese speakers. The production of Korean vowels by the two Chinese groups was compared to that of native Korean group. The results showed that the articulation positions of the two Chinese groups were different from that of the native Korean group in F1, which is a position of the tongue height for the case of the Korean vowels of [i], [a], and [u]. In particular, the vowel [u] could not be produced as can be produced by Koreans in F2, which is a position of showing how much tongue is fronted. Also, the production of the vowel [？] by the two Chinese groups was different from that of the native Koreans in F2. In perception test, meanwhile, production of the two Chinese groups were played for 14 native Koreans and they were asked to identify vowel of what they were listened to. The highest number of correct answers corresponded to the most correctly acquired Korean vowels. The results showed that among beginning speakers, the vowel [a] gained the highest correct answers, followed by [？], [e], [e], [？], [i], and [u] respectively. On the contrary, among advanced level speakers, the vowel [a] did gained the highest number of correct answers, followed by [e], [？], [o], [？], [i], and [u] respectively. However, the order of vowel groups from highest to lowest correct answers were consistent in both groups of speaking levels-‘the same sound’, followed by ‘new sound’, followed by ‘similar sound’ in the order of highest to lowest number of correct answers.
In conclusion, the results of the production test and the perception test were largely consistent with those of Flege’s(1995) SLM. In other words, the acquisition of the ‘similar sound’ is hard in spite of a prolonged learning period, as Flege(1995) mentioned. Meanwhile, sounds classified as the ‘new sound’ considerably improved depending on learning period. Therefore, it can be suggested that expanding the duration of stay in Korean can lead to a more successful acquisition of Korean. Moreover, the results of the perception test were also consistent with Flege’s(1995) SLM, even more so than the results of the production test. In addition, the production errors of Korean vowels by native Chinese speakers did not follow the hierarchy of difficulty as claimed by Prator(1967) based on the analysis discussed in chapter 3. Thus, it can be suggested that inter-language similarity is adequate for error analysis as well as acquisition of pronunciation, rather than heterogeneity.
This study was an empirical study of Korean and Chinese vowels based on acoustic phonetics perspective for comparison and contrast, and it aimed to describe the acquisition of native Chinese speaker’s Korean vowels for the first time. Even though this study was limited to simple vowels, it showed insights that can provide objective data for teaching native Chinese to pronounce Korean vowels correctly.
，韩语毕业论文，韩语毕业论文 |
