L2 습득이론에 따른 영어 마찰음에 대한 한국 어린이 영어 학습자의 인지 능력 = Speech perception of English fricatives by Korean young learners of English based on L2 acquisition theories

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

In this study, we investigate how L2 acquisition theories can successfully account for the relative difficulties in the perception of English fricatives by Korean young learners. Regarding the acquisition of L2 phonemes, the previous studies can be divided into two main approaches: (1) phoneme-based analysis which is mainly concerned with Loanword Phonology and Perceptual Assimilation Model vs. (2) feature-based analysis. Noticing that these analyses make different predictions on the acquisition of L2 sounds, we conducted AX discrimination task and 4I-oddity task to find which types of English fricatives (voicing, place, and manner of articulation) Korean young learners have difficulties in perceiving. 30 Korean elementary school students participated in the tasks and 27 minimal pairs including word-initial English fricatives were employed. Crucial to the analysis of the experimental results is that with one particular L2 acquisition theory it is impossible to explain why Korean learners can or cannot perceive English fricatives distinctively. That is, Korean young learners’ perceptibility of English fricatives is attributed to both phonemic differences and feature differences between L1 and L2. Furthermore, in some cases, the fact that Korean young learners fail to discriminate certain pairs of English fricatives should be better accounted for by considering phonetic characteristics of L1 and L2 fricatives.