Production and Perception of English Word-Final Stops by Korean Speakers
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Production and Perception of English Word-final Stops by Korean Speakers A Dissertation Presented by Jungyeon Kim to The Graduate School in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics Stony Brook University August 2018 Stony Brook University The Graduate School Jungyeon Kim We, the dissertation committee for the above candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy degree, hereby recommend acceptance of this dissertation. Ellen Broselow – Dissertation Co-Advisor Professor, Department of Linguistics Christina Y. Bethin – Dissertation Co-Advisor Professor, Department of Linguistics Marie K. Huffman - Chairperson of Defense Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics Jiwon Hwang Lecturer, Asian and Asian American Studies Yoonjung Kang Professor, Centre for French and Linguistics, University of Toronto Scarborough This dissertation is accepted by the Graduate School Charles Taber Dean of the Graduate School ii Abstract of the Dissertation Production and Perception of English Word-final Stops by Korean Speakers by Jungyeon Kim Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics Stony Brook University 2018 One puzzle in loanword adaptation involves a situation where a foreign structure is changed even when the original structure would be legal in the borrowing language. An example of this apparently unnecessary repair is the tendency to insert a vowel after a word-final stop in English borrowed words into Korean (e.g., peak → [phikh]), even when the forms would be pronounceable in Korean, since native Korean words may end in stops. The goal of this dissertation is to investigate the effects of different linguistic factors on the likelihood of vowel insertion and to determine whether this unmotivated vowel insertion derives from the misperception of English words or from a production grammar maintaining perceptual similarity between the English form and Korean pronunciation. The linguistic factors that this work examines are: (i) primary factors: stop release, stop voicing, and tenseness of pre-stop vowel, (ii) secondary factors: stop place and final stress, and (iii) other factors: morphological alternation and word size. I separate out the effects of these factors in a series of experiments designed to help in deciding between the adaptation-in-perception approach vs. the adaptation- in-production approach. The experiments that I conducted for my study were: (i) a production task, where Korean speakers were asked to listen to English nonce words ending in a stop and to repeat what they heard; (ii) a syllable counting task, in which Korean speakers listened to English nonce words ending in a stop and indicated the number of syllables they heard in each word; (iii) a categorization task, where Korean listeners heard English nonce words ending in a stop or a stop followed by a vowel and categorized each word as consonant-final or vowel-final; and (iv) a similarity judgment task, in which Korean speakers listened to a triplet consisting of an English stop-final form and two Korean forms, one ending in a stop and one ending in stop- vowel, and indicated which of the two Korean forms the English form sounded more similar to. The results of these different tasks indicate that unnecessary vowel insertion is not a straightforward outcome that happens in adaptation but an intricate linguistic phenomenon that involves the complex interaction of perception and production. iii Table of Contents List of Figures ··························································································· vi List of Tables ·························································································· viii Acknowledgments ······················································································ x Chapter 1 Introduction ················································································ 1 Chapter 2 Production Errors ········································································· 8 2.1 Korean sound system ·············································································· 8 2.2 Survey ······························································································ 10 2.3 Production experiment: Repetition ····························································· 19 2.3.1 Participants ·············································································· 19 2.3.2 Acoustic properties of auditory stimuli ·············································· 19 2.3.3 Procedure ················································································ 26 2.3.4 Predictions ·············································································· 26 2.3.5 Burst noise intervals of final stops ··················································· 27 2.3.6 Epenthetic vowels ······································································ 33 2.4 Discussion ························································································· 35 Chapter 3 Syllable Counting ········································································ 37 3.1 Hypotheses ························································································ 37 3.2 Syllable counting experiment ···································································· 41 3.2.1 Participants ·············································································· 41 3.2.2 Stimuli ··················································································· 42 3.2.3 Procedure ················································································ 42 3.2.4 Predictions ·············································································· 42 3.2.5 Results ··················································································· 45 3.2.5.1 Overall accuracy ··························································· 45 3.2.5.2 Statistical analysis ························································· 46 3.2.6 Discussion ··············································································· 52 Chapter 4 Categorization ············································································ 62 4.1 Categorization experiment ······································································· 62 4.1.1 Participants ·············································································· 62 4.1.2 Stimuli and procedure ································································· 63 4.1.3 Predictions ·············································································· 64 4.1.4 Results ··················································································· 66 4.1.4.1 Overall results ······························································ 66 4.1.4.2 Consonant-final words ···················································· 67 4.1.4.3 Vowel-final words heard as consonant-final ···························· 74 4.1.5 Discussion ··············································································· 76 Chapter 5 Similarity judgments ···································································· 83 5.1 Similarity judgment experiment ································································ 83 5.1.1 Participants ·············································································· 83 5.1.2 Stimuli and procedure ································································· 84 iv 5.1.3 Predictions ·············································································· 85 5.1.4 Results ··················································································· 88 5.1.5 Discussion ··············································································· 95 Chapter 6 Conclusion ··············································································· 101 6.1 Overview ························································································· 101 6.2 Summary of findings ············································································ 102 6.2.1 Production study ······································································ 102 6.2.2 Perception experiments ······························································ 102 6.3 Acoustic motivations for illusory vowel perception ········································· 104 6.3.1 Stop release ············································································ 104 6.3.2 Vowel tenseness ······································································· 105 6.3.3 Stop voicing ··········································································· 106 6.4 Concluding remarks ············································································· 110 References ······························································································ 112 Appendix 1 Numeric data ······································································· 121 Appendix 2 The experimental and filler items used in the production task and the syllable counting task ······································································· 130 Appendix 3 The experimental and filler items used in the categorization task ··········· 131 Appendix 4 Vowel-final items heard as consonant-final and their responses ············· 133 Appendix 5 The experimental and filler items used in the similarity judgement task ··· 135 v List of Figures Figure 2.1 Adaptation patterns of English words ending in a stop ························· 11 Figure 2.2 Adaptation