This study investigated whether Korean L2 learners’ production of German final devoicing is gradient or categorical and whether they can produce voiced and voiceless obstruents differently like native speakers of German. By answerting these question...
This study investigated whether Korean L2 learners’ production of German final devoicing is gradient or categorical and whether they can produce voiced and voiceless obstruents differently like native speakers of German. By answerting these questions, we can see whether L2 learners are acquiring L1 speakers’ gradient final devoicing rule on the production side and see whether Korean L2 learners’ production of voicing contrast is sensitive to different environment. We have many possible exectations: (i) if Korean learners of German have acquired both voicing contrast and hyperarticulated it, they are expected to show incomplete neutralization. (ii) If they have acquired voicing contrast in German and applied complete final devoicing, they will show no voicing contrast.
22 German-learning Korean speakers participlated in the production experiment. They were undergraduate students and 7 were females and 16 males. They ranged in age from 19 to 27 year, with an average age of 22.7. They all majored in German at college. All the stimuli were uttered three times in the carrier sentences by each Korean subject, and their sounds were recorded with Praat (e.g "Ich sage ___________ (nochmal )") in vive conditions (1) syllable-initial or word-medial (2) syllable-final, voiceless continuation (3) syllable-final voiceless continuation (4) word-final (5) utterance-final position. To see the voicing contrast, five acoustic parameters were measured: (i) (Closure) duration of the preceding consonant, (ii) Duration of the preceding vowels, (iii) Closure duration of the stop or frication duration of the fricatives, (iv) Release duration of consonants, and (v) F0 of the preceding vowel.
Results showed that there were significant differences in duration of preceding consonants, vowel duration, closure duration, and release duration of consonants between voiceless and voiced conditions but no significant difference was found with respect to F0 of the preceding vowels. First, (closure) duration of the preceding consonants was 16 ms longer before the underlying voiceless than before voiced consonants (111 ms. vs 95 ms). Second, overall, duration of the preceding vowels was 15 ms. longer before the underlyingly voiced than before the underlyingly voiceless obstruents (95 ms. vs 80 ms, F(1,1565)=65, p<0.001). Next, closure duration of the stops or frication duration of the fricatives was 12 ms. longer in voiceless than in voiced obstruents (99 ms. vs 87 ms, F(1,1563)=28, p<0.001). Finally, release duration was 8 ms. longer in the underlyingly voiceless obstruents than in the voiced obstruents (71 ms. vs 63 ms., F(1,1550)=5.9, p<0.01). These results indicate that Korean learners of German acquired voicing contrast in German from the different realization in syllable initial position, and seem to have acquired incomplete neutralization of final devoicing rules, showing voicing contrast in the other rule environments. Such finding provides several interpretations. First, Korean L2 learners might have successfully acquired both voicing contrast and incomplete neutralization, i.e., German Final devoicing Rule like some native German speakers according to their experience or exposure to German. Second, they might have hyperarticulated the voicing contrast as an influence of orthographic information, reading-list elicitation task or speaking rates. Finally, although they may have acquired German FD, phonetic implementation (i.e. incomplete realization) of phonological rules like German final devoicing is by nature gradient or unmarked cross-linguistically.