Early Korean bilingual children’s production of English stressed vowels in multisyllabic words

Eunhae Oh 한국음운론학회 2012 음성·음운·형태론 연구 Vol.18 No.2

The effect of age of acquisition and amount of experience on the production of English stressed vowels in multisyllabic words was investigated. Twenty Korean-speaking children varying in age of second-language (L2) exposure and the amount of experience (6 months vs. 6 years) were compared to ten age-matched native English speaking children. English multisyllabic words containing stressed syllables were elicited. The results for Korean children who were exposed to the L2 before the age of three returned a native-like production of stressed vowels. The native Korean-speaking children with shorter L2 exposure were unable to produce distinctive phonemic categories, indicating a strong L1 interference on L2. The early learners of English, however, were comparable to the native English-speaking children in producing stressed vowels. Furthermore, the early bilingual children’s native-like perceptual distance between stressed and unstressed vowels was interpreted as their early mastery of English vowel spectral qualities that are prosodically conditioned at the lexical level.

Early and Late Child Bilinguals’ Productions of L1 and L2 Vowels

Eunhae Oh 한국응용언어학회 2013 응용 언어학 Vol.29 No.3

The current study investigated the effect of age of acquisition and amount of language experience on children’s vowel production of the first-(L1) and second-language (L2). A total of twelve Korean learners of English varying in the amount of L2 experience (2 years vs. 5 years) participated. For L1 (Korean) and L2 (English) vowel comparisons, the spectral quality of nine English and seven Korean vowels were recorded and analyzed. The results demonstrated that the production of both English and Korean vowels varied by group. The child group with 5 years of English exposure showed more distinct separation between Korean and English vowel categories than the child group with 2 years of experience. The results suggest that late learners of L2 are likely to show a greater degree of interaction between L1 and L2 compared to early learners.

Effects of boundary strength on geminate duration in English

Eunhae Oh 한국음운론학회 2013 음성·음운·형태론 연구 Vol.19 No.3

Payne (2005) argues that fake geminates are longer than true geminates and Ridouane (2007) shows that their preceding vowel duration is also significantly longer. These effects are likely due to the boundary that distinguishes fake from true geminates. If this is correct, boundary strength is expected to affect fake geminates with different morpheme boundaries. In Experiment 1, we investigated this possibility by comparing the absolute and consonant-to-vowel durations of assimilated (Level 1) and concatenated (Level 2) word-internal and cross-word boundary fake geminates in English (e.g., immoral vs. unnamed vs. fun name). The results showed that both types of concatenated fake geminates were shorter than assimilated fake geminates in relative terms. A follow up experiment, comparing geminates in compound words to those emerging across words showed no differences in relative duration between the two. These results suggest that boundary strength may be less important than boundary decomposability in production. Overall, we argue that boundary decomposability impacts the phonetic implementation of geminates and likely does so whether these are true or fake.

The acquisition of timing patterns in children’s productions

Eunhae Oh 한국음운론학회 2015 음성·음운·형태론 연구 Vol.21 No.1

The current study examined differences in the segmental duration of adults’ and school-aged children’s speech. The purpose of the study was to understand the durational patterns and rhythmic characteristics of school-aged children’s speech production. The effects of vowel identity, final coda voicing and number of syllables on absolute and relative duration were explored. Similar to previous studies, segmental duration in absolute terms was found to be significantly longer for children than for adults. However, no significant differences were found between adults and children in terms of the relative timing patterns of inherent vowels, vowels before voiced and voiceless consonants or stressed vowels in multisyllabic words. An adult-like timing control found in children’s production is interpreted to indicate a high level of phonological knowledge about the relative timing of sequential segments, despite some evidence of oral-motor constraints.

Korean speakers hyperarticulate vowels in polite speech

Eunhae Oh,Bodo Winter,Kaori Idemaru 한국음성학회 2021 말소리와 음성과학 Vol.13 No.3

In line with recent attention to the multimodal expression of politeness, the present study examined the association between polite speech and acoustic features through the analysis of vowels produced in casual and polite speech contexts in Korean. Fourteen adult native speakers of Seoul Korean produced the utterances in two social conditions to elicit polite (professor) and casual (friend) speech. Vowel duration and the first (F1) and second formants (F2) of seven sentence- and phrase-initial monophthongs were measured. The results showed that polite speech shares acoustic similarities with vowel production in clear speech: speakers showed greater vowel space expansion in polite than casual speech in an effort to enhance perceptual intelligibility. Especially, female speakers hyperarticulated (front) vowels for polite speech, independent of speech rate. The implications for the acoustic encoding of social stance in polite speech are further discussed.

The identification of Korean vowels /o/ and /u/ by native English speakers

Oh, Eunhae 한국음성학회 2016 말소리와 음성과학 Vol.8 No.1

The Korean high back vowels /o/ and /u/ have been reported to be in a state of near-merger especially among young female speakers. Along with cross-generational changes, the vowel position within a word has been reported to render different phonetic realization. The current study examines native English speakers’ ability to attend to the phonetic cues that distinguish the two merging vowels and the positional effects (word-initial vs. word-final) on the identification accuracy. 28 two-syllable words containing /o/ or /u/ in either initial or final position were produced by native female Korean speakers. The CV part of each target word were excised and presented to six native English speakers. The results showed that although the identification accuracy was the lowest for /o/ in word- final position (41%), it increased up to 80% in word-initial position. The acoustic analyses of the target vowels showed that /o/ and /u/ were differentiated on the height dimension only in word-initial position, suggesting that English speakers may have perceived the distinctive F1 difference retained in the prominent position.

Korean-English bilingual children’s production of stop contrasts

Eunhae Oh 한국음성학회 2019 말소리와 음성과학 Vol.11 No.3

Korean (L1)-English (L2) bilingual adults’ and children’s production of Korean and English stops was examined to determine the age effects and L2 experience on the development of L1 and L2 stop contrasts. Four groups of Seoul Korean speakers (experienced and inexperienced adult and child groups) and two groups of age-matched native English speakers participated. The overall results of voice onset time (VOT) and fundamental frequency (F0) of phrase-initial stops in Korean and word-intial stops in English showed a delay in the acquisition of L1 due to the dominant exposure to L2. Significantly longer VOT and lower F0 for aspirated stops as well as high temporal variability across repetitions of lenis stops were interpreted to indicate a strong effect of English on Korean stop contrasts for bilingual children. That is, the heavy use of VOT for Korean stop contrasts shows bilingual children’s attention to the acoustic cue that are primarily employed in the dominant L2. Furthermore, inexperienced children, but not adults, were shown to create new L2 categories that are distinctive from the L1 within 6 months of L2 experience, suggesting greater independence between the two phonological systems. The implications of bilinguals’ age at the time of testing to the degree and direction of L1-L2 interaction are further discussed.

Mandarin Chinese Speakers’ Production of English Vowel Duration as a Function of Coda Voicing and Syllable Number

Eunhae Oh 한국응용언어학회 2017 응용 언어학 Vol.33 No.1

The current study compared native English-speaking adults’ and native Mandarin-speaking adults’ ability to produce context-specific vowel duration differences under the assumption that variability is higher in non-native language learners’ production. A total of twenty native Mandarin and English speakers produced real English words in a frame sentence multiple times. The mean vowel and consonant closure duration and vowel duration variability were analyzed. The results were that Mandarin Chinese speakers produced considerably smaller contrasts but greater temporal variability than English speakers in their production of individual words. The results indicated that the phonological knowledge of L1 is likely to interfere with the temporal patterns of L2 production.

The Effects of Digital Content on Usefulness, Flow, and Usage Intention : Focusing on the Types of Digital Content Users

Eunhae Oh,San-il Lee 한국디지털융합학회 2021 IJICTDC Vol.6 No.1

With the emergence of Web 2.0, the role of digital content users has expanded from digital content consumers to digital content creators, both of which are contributing significant changes in the economy, society, and culture. In light of this phenomenal trend, we categorize digital content users into digital content user 1.0 (passive users) and digital content user 2.0 (proactive users) in order to develop specific business models and digital service strategies. These two types of digital content users are established based on the patterns of the digital content usage. Along with these types, the effects of digital content characteristics (design, scenario, structure, and technology) on the usefulness, flow and usage intention of digital content are analyzed. Results show that design characteristics do not affect usefulness for both user types. While the technological characteristics of digital content have a positive effect on the flow of digital content user 1.0, the design, scenario, and structure characteristics have a positive effect on the flow of digital content user 2.0. Our study helps managers establish digital content business strategies and digital service plans based on the characteristics of digital content and digital content user types. Our study also provides a theoretical foundation for future digital content related studies.

The acquisition of acoustic correlates of politeness by native Chinese speakers

Eunhae Oh,Mao Cui 경희대학교 언어정보연구소 2020 언어연구 Vol.37 No.S

The current paper explores the acoustic correlates of polite speech in Chinese to examine the similarities and differences of phonetic features contributing to the conveyance of politeness between Korean and Chinese. Building on the previous research on different levels of politeness in Korean, Experiment 1 investigated the phonetic characteristics of deferential and non-deferential Chinese utterances produced by eight native Chinese speakers. The results showed that F0, intensity, H1-H2, HNR and duration played important roles in distinguishing deferential from non-deferential speech, which conform to the patterns shown in Korean. Experiment 2 further assessed deferential and non-deferential speech in Korean produced by Chinese learners of Korean under the assumption that Chinese learners will express deference in the L2 without much difficulty due to the shared phonetic knowledge in the L1. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of cross-cultural multimodal politeness and the implicit acquisition of sociopragmatic knowledge in the L2.