This explores the degree of perceived similarity between the Korean and Chinese language through experiments with native Chinese speakers learning Korean as a second language(L2), and aims to find out how the perceived similarity and the length ...
This explores the degree of perceived similarity between the Korean and Chinese language through experiments with native Chinese speakers learning Korean as a second language(L2), and aims to find out how the perceived similarity and the length of residence(LOR) affect Chinese students’ acquisition of Korean consonants.
With these goals in mind, each chapter presents following experiments: Chapter I sets forth the aim of this study and clarifies the need for it by examining existing studies written under the same topic. Also, the chapter briefly introduces Flege’s Speech Learning Model(SLM) as a theoretical base, as well as the consonant system of Korean and Chinese. Chapter II deals with perception tests, which were conducted on 30 Chinese students of all tiers, from basic, intermediate to advanced. Chapter III discusses findings from production and listening tests conducted on native Korean speakers. Based on the experiment results, chapter II and III make an analysis to draw implications for L2 phone acquisition. Finally, chapter IV presents the conclusion and limitations of this study.
Findings from experiments are as follows:
First, the perception test indicated that aspirated sounds in the Korean language /ㅍ/, /ㅌ/, /ㅋ/ had a high degree of perceived similarity to aspirated sounds in the Chinese language /p/, /t/, /k/, and Korean tense sounds /ㅃ/, /ㄸ/, /ㄲ/ seemed to be perceived similar to Chinese unaspirated sounds /b/, /d/, /g/. However, Korean lax consonants /ㅂ/, /ㄷ/, /ㄱ/ appeared to have a relatively neutral degree of perceived similarity to Chinese aspirated sounds /p/, /t/, /k/, yet in absolute terms, plosives in the Korean and Chinese language were considered quite similar after all. Moreover, according to the findings, LOR had hardly affected the degree of perceived similarity. The plosives in both languages share the place and manner of articulation, and are different only in the length of aspiration. Considering that LOR has little to do with the perceived similarity, consonants with similar place and manner of articulation are deemed more or less the same from the early stage of language acquisition, which inevitably deters formation of new phonetic categories for hard-to-perceive concepts, such as the length of aspiration.
Production and listening tests showed the following: after observing the impact of LOR on phone acquisition, it appeared that LOR affected acquisition of all consonants but /ㄲ/. Consonants highly affected by LOR were /ㄱ/, /ㄷ/, least affected were /ㅃ/, /ㅂ/ and /ㅍ/, /ㅌ/, /ㅋ/, /ㄸ/ came in between. This suggests that LOR can become a variable in the process of acquiring L2 phones. The language acquisition patterns are twofold: first, in terms of the order of acquisition, consonants with a high degree of perceived similarity were acquired earlier than others. Second, in terms of the speed of acquisition, consonants with a low degree of perceived similarity were acquired quickly, and this ultimately led to predicting that lax consonants, having a low similarity degree, should be acquired most accurately.
This study is meaningful in that it analyzes the degree of perceived similarity between Korean and Chinese consonants in an effort to explore the actual acquisition process of foreign language learners. While existing studies seem to have been confined to language comparison or error analysis, this study goes one step further in order to observe how learners perceive certain phones in two different languages, thus it should be able to serve as a basis for future studies on Korean language pronunciation.
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