Acoustic Analysis Of English Monophthongal Vowel Producetion By Ethnic Korean College Students In China

This paper investigates the acoustic features of English monophthongs produced by ethnic Korean English major students (KEM in the paper) in Yanbian University.By CSL 4300B spectrograph, the first two formant frequencies and duration of the English vowels produced by the subjects are measured in connected flow of speech. The data, after appropriate normalization, are compared with that of standard British Southern RP speakers (RPS) in terms of two aspects: English vowels similar to the native Korean ones and vowels different from the native ones. The comparison is also conducted in terms of Korean vowels produced by ethnic Korean speakers (KS).The results of the comparison are as following: in terms of similar vowels, theproduction of/u:/ and /d/ are fully overlapped with and in the vowel space; /i:/ and /a:/ are very close to the corresponding Korean vowels / / and / /; is betweenRPS' and KS' and produced by KEM are highly overlapped in the vowel space, and retain a sufficient distance from other vowels in the vowel space produced by KEM. In terms of five new vowels, and are authentically produced by KEM,indicating that KEM can successfully produce these two vowels. KEM can distinguish /I/ and /i:/; however, it is possible that /I/ produced by KEM has assimilated to Korean vowel and each overlap with the Korean vowels and and also each overlapwith the two English vowels /u:/ and produced by KEM, indicating that KEM cannot produce these two pairs in a proper way. In terms of vowel duration, it is found that theaverage relative duration contrast between the long vowels and short vowels produced by KEM is shorter than that produced by RPS. The relative durations of similar vowels produced by KEM are between that of RPS and KS, The relative durations of new short vowels are longer than that produced by RPS, whereas the relative duration of new long vowels are shorter than that produced by RPS. In the Mel-scaled perceptual space, it is found that the high vowels produced by KEM are perceptually lower in position than those produced by RPS, but are similar in height with Korean high vowels. The vowels produced by KEM are perceptually more tense than the vowels produced by RPS, indicating that KEM use more strength in producing English vowels than RPS. The production of /I/ by KEM is perceptually lower than /I/ produced by RPS but is close to. The three pairs of vowels produced by KEM, and and and are each perceptually close to and produced by KEM is perceptuallyclose to that by RPS, indicating KEM can produce this vowel accurately. However, it is overlapped with its neighboring vowel Id produced by KEM. The paper concludes that neither SLM, put forward by Flege, or PAM, proposed by Best, can single-handedly account for the production of the English vowels by KEM.