Consonant target and undershoot

Eunjin Oh 한국음운론학회 2003 음성·음운·형태론 연구 Vol.9 No.1

Oh, Eunjin. 2003. Consonant target and undershoot. Studies in Phonetics, Phonology and Morphology 9.1. 135-147. The back vowels of French are produced more back than the back vowels in English. The Dispersion Theory of segmental inventory by Lindblom (1986) would explain that French with three vowels in the high vowel space (/i, y, u/) has more demand on the maintenance of contrasts and therefore needs to use wider vowel space than English with only two high vowels (/i, u/) does. Other than this difference in the inherent vowel values, the French back vowels in general exhibit less degree of fronting in the context of the coronal consonants than the English back vowels, again due to the contrastive needs with the front round vowel (Flemming 1997,2001). In this paper, I show that the inherent values of the coronal consonants and the values of the coronal consonants in the context of back vowels also show systematic differences between English and French. I also show that speakers need to learn the coarticulatory difference as well as the inherent target difference in the coronal consonant values. The F2 of French coronals turned out to be 267 Hz lower than the F2 of English coronals, and the degree of retraction of the coronal consonants toward the back vowels was significantly larger in French than in English. This result in the consonants' inherent and allophonic differences can be interpreted that French, with larger demand on the vowel contrasts, shows larger deviation in the consonantal values in order to reduce otherwise 'too long' articulatory movement. Another interesting result is that non-native speakers have to learn the degree of coarticulatory variations as well as the target values of the coronal consonants. English speakers' production of the French consonant indicates that they did not achieve the French native values in target and undershoot. French speakers' production of English consonant showed that they learned the native values of undershoot but not of target. The separate learning of target and undershoot indicates that the coarticulatory effects are not just physiological phenomena which follow automatically from the phonological component but should be included in the language-specific phonetic grammar (Keating 1985). (Ewha Womans University)

Fronting of back vowels in coronal contexts: a cross-language study

Eunjin Oh 한국음운론학회 2002 음성·음운·형태론 연구 Vol.8 No.2

Oh, Eunjin. 2002. Fronting of back vowels in coronal contexts: a cross-language study Studies in Phonetics, Phonology and Morphology 8.2. 239-254. This paper explores whether Chinese, French, and German with three high vowels pattern together in exhibiting a smaller degree of back vowel fronting in coronal contexts than English with only two high vowels This paper also investigates the English syllables produced by Chinese, French, and German speakers, and see whether Chinese, French, and German speakers of English increase the degree of fronting when they produce English. The results indicated that the target F2 values of the vowel [u] were higher in English than in Chinese, French, or German, and the undershoot values of the vowel in the context of the coronal consonants were larger in English than in other languages tested. The Chinese, French, or German speakers mostly produced a higher vowel target F2 and larger amounts of vowel undershoot for English than for their native language. As far as experience effects were concerned, the data suggested that the speakers in the beginners' groups were just as good as the speakers in the advanced groups in producing the correct English vowel targets, but the advanced speakers achieved better coarticulation than the beginning speakers The results indicate that the production of phonological targets is not automatically followed by the proper degree of coarticulation and that they have to be independently learned. This may represent information that becomes part of the grammar of a language. As well as the static aspects of coarticulation, language-specific dynamic patterns of coarticulation do not follow automatically from the acquisition of phonological targets and speakers have to learn them independently. (Ewha Womans University)

Speaker Gender and the Degree of Coarticulation

Eunjin Oh 한국언어학회 2010 언어 Vol.35 No.3

Non-native Locus Equations and the Unit of Phonetic Acquisition

Oh, Eunjin The Korean Association for the Study of English La 2001 영어학 Vol.1 No.3

This study tested whether non-native speakers approximated native-like locus equation slopes. Russian learners of English acquired native-like values of the locus equation slope for the English bilabial, and English learners of Russian made slight modifications to the locus equation slope of the Russian bilabial. The acquisition of the locus equations occurred gradually with experience. While English speakers, with limited experience with Russian, failed to approximate Russian-typical value of the locus equations slope, Russian speakers, with more extensive experience with English, succeeded in approximating the locus equation for English bilabial. The observation of locus equation transfer effect supports for the locus equation hypothesis as the unit of acquisition over CV-by-CV learning.

Speaker Gender and the Degree of Coarticulation

Eunjin Oh 한국언어학회 2010 언어 Vol.35 No.3

Gender differences have been reported in many acoustic measures. This study investigated whether degrees of coarticulation vary as a function of speaker gender. Seven male and seven female native speakers of American English participated in the experiment. The degrees of vowel-to-vowel and consonant-to-vowel coarticulation were calculated by taking differences between estimated vowel target and contextual vowel values. While the results were, in general, inconsistent for vowel-to-vowel coarticulation, the degree of [u]-fronting in front vowel and alveolar consonant contexts displayed consistent results, the males showing larger degrees of [u]-fronting on average than the females. Considering the distribution of the English vowel inventory which shows greater levels of contrast in the height dimension, the inconsistency of gender differences in the degrees of vowel-to-vowel coarticulation in the F1 dimension is not unexpected. The consistency of differences in the degrees of mean [u]-fronting in the front vowel and alveolar consonant contexts suggests that speaker gender will need to be considered for future studies investigating the degrees of coarticulation. It is also suggested that further investigation of coarticulatory differences between genders is necessary using a language with a smaller phonemic inventory and therefore larger amounts of coarticulation.

Spectral patterns of the American English diphthong /ai/ as a function of coda voicing produced by native Korean speakers

( Eunjin Oh ) 경희대학교 언어정보연구소 2018 언어연구 Vol.35 No.1

This study aimed to investigate how native speakers of Korean who learned English as a second language realize spectral differences in the American English diphthong /ai/ as a function of coda voicing. Ten Korean learners of English and eight native speakers of American English participated in a production experiment. The monosyllabic words “bite” (/bait/) and “bide” (/baid/) were read along with filler words in isolation and in a carrier sentence. The native group demonstrated significantly smaller F1 and larger F2 before /t/ than /d/ both in the nucleus /a/ and in the offglide /i/ (Moreton 2004). The learner group did not show statistically significant spectral changes in the nucleus and the offglide. Also, the native group significantly reduced the temporal distance between the nucleus and the offglide, and showed spectral peripheralization in the offglide before /t/ than /d/ (Pycha and Dahan 2016). However, the learner group did not show native-like reduction of the temporal distance between the nucleus and the offglide and spectral peripheralization in the offglide. Although the non-native speakers in this study exhibited some durational changes as a function of coda voicing, they did not learn the fine phonetic details regarding the gestural timing and spectral patterns in the diphthong. A considerable degree of individual variation in the learner group and speaking context effects were also found. It was interpreted that the Hyperarticulation hypothesis (Thomas 2000; Moreton 2004) and the Gestural Timing hypothesis (Pycha and Dahan 2016) could provide indices modelling the non-native phenomena found in this study as not attaining native-like phonetic values and gradual approach to the values concerning the spectral and durational aspects in /ai/ as a function of coda voicing. (Ewha Womans University)

Effects of base token for stimuli manipulation on the perception of Korean stops among native and non-native listeners

Eunjin Oh 한국음성학회 2020 말소리와 음성과학 Vol.12 No.1

This study investigated whether listeners’ perceptual patterns varied according to base token selected for stimuli manipulation. Voice onset time (VOT) and fundamental frequency (F0) values were orthogonally manipulated, each in seven steps, using naturally produced words that contained a lenis (/kan/) and an aspirated (/k<SUP>h</SUP>an/) stop in Seoul Korean. Both native and non-native groups showed significantly higher numbers of aspirated responses for the stimuli constructed with /k<SUP>h</SUP>an/, evidencing the use of minor cues left in the stimuli after manipulation. For the native group the use of the VOT and F0 cues in the stop categorization did not differ depending on whether the base token included the lenis or aspirated stop, indicating that the results of previous studies remain tenable that investigated the relative importance of the acoustic cues in the native listener perception of the Korean stop contrasts by using one base token for manipulating perceptual stimuli. For the non-native group, the use patterns of the F0 cue differed as a function of base token selected. Some findings indicated that listeners used alternative cues to identify the stop contrast when major cues sound ambiguous. The use of the manipulated VOT and F0 cues by the non-native group was not native-like, suggesting that non-native listeners may have perceived the minor cues as stable in the context of the manipulated cue combinations.

The Coronal Stop Places of Early Korean-English Bilingual Speakers

Eunjin Oh 한국언어학회 2010 언어 Vol.35 No.1

The High Vowel Systems of Korean-English Bilingual Speakers

Eunjin Oh(오은진) 한국영어학회 2009 영어학 Vol.9 No.4

The Contextualized Windows

Oh, Eunjin 이화여자대학교 영미학연구소 2003 영어학 연구 Vol.- No.8

This squib argues that Keating's windows (1990) have to be more constrained to describe the whole range of contextual variation of a feature value. While the window widths, once determined, are assumed not to vary according to contexts, there were various cases in which different widths of windows need to be assumed even for a feature value depending on the context in which it appears. The notions of the phonological specification or unspecification often do not help in the determination of windows. A voiced stop and a voiceless stop, for example, have the same feature value for nasality in phonology but need to be differentiated in the patterns of window widths.