Annika Huber, “Acoustic and Articulatory Characteristics of English and Korean Vowels”
Mentor: Jae Yung Song, Linguistics
Poster #63

Research has shown that language learners experience difficulty in producing sound contrasts in the target language that do not occur in their native language. For example, many Korean students learning English are known to have difficulty making a distinction between words like “feet” and “fit”, or “set” and “sat”, as the distinction between the two vowels is absent in Korean. In this study, we addressed questions including how English vowels are different from Korean vowels, whether there are any particular patterns that Korean students exhibit when pronouncing English vowels, and in particular, whether they pronounce English vowels similarly to Korean vowels. To this end, we compared the acoustic and articulatory characteristics of English and Korean vowels. During the experiment, 4 native speakers of American English and 4 native speakers of Korean were asked to produce words containing 9 English target vowels, each occurring in two different words, one ending in a voiced consonant (e.g., bid) and one ending in a voiceless consonant (e.g., bit). The native speakers of Korean also produced words containing 7 Korean target vowels. The collected vowel data was analyzed using both acoustic (duration, formant frequencies) and articulatory (ultrasound) measures. The results showed that the native speakers of Korean did not make acoustic or articulatory distinctions between words like beat vs. bit, bet vs. bat, and boot vs. put. The analysis of the other vowels are in progress. These findings are significant because they provide explanations for why Korean students experience difficulty in pronouncing some English vowels. Furthermore, the descriptions of vowel productions from the present study will provide much needed background for developing future training and research programs.