Reduced Vowel Quality Accounts for Korean Accent of English

초록

We investigate the reduced vowel quality in Korean learner speech of English in comparison with the native speech, along the previous findings in literature that the reduced vowel quality accounts for the syllable-timedness of Singapore English and Taiwan English. We measured the location of the first and second formants (F1 and F2) of stressed and reduced vowels in 10 morphologically related word pairs of English, which were read by 25 native American English speakers and by 41 Korean learners before and after a classroom instruction. The results show that the formant location of reduced vowels is significantly more dispersed in Korean learner English than in the native speech of American English (p < .001). In tandem with this fact, the dispersion ratio between the stressed and reduced vowels were significantly smaller in Korean learner English than in the native speech of American English (p < .001). Both of these values in the Korean learner speech assimilated to the native speech after the classroom instruction. In conclusion, the vowel reduction in English is not well commanded by the Korean learners with lower proficiency, and thus characterizes the syllable-timedness of Korean accent of English.

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