Aims: To investigate the developmental trajectory of the rate and perceptual assessment of oral diadochokinesis (DDK) in typically developing children compared with adults. Also to examine the characteristics of DDK productions in children with speech sound disorders (SSD) and the relationship between DDK production and percentage of consonants…

This dissertation examines whether EFL and ESL Korean learners of English are able to produce and perceive two English phonological contrasts that depend on vowel duration differences, coda consonant voicing contrasts and the tense-lax distinction in vowels. For production, it examines differences in vowel duration and vowel quality associated…

Perceptual narrowing of speech perception supposes that young infants can discriminate most speech sounds early in life. During the second half of the first year, infants' phonetic sensitivity is attuned to their native phonology. However, supporting evidence for this pattern comes primarily from learners from a limited number of regions and…

Writing systems differ in various aspects. English and Korean share basic principles of the alphabetic writing system. As an alphabetic script, Korean Hangul has relatively more regular mapping between graphemes and phonemes; however, its letters are written in syllable units, which encourages phonological retrieval at the syllable level.…

The Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM) (Best, 1995) claims listeners directly perceive articulatory gestures of the vocal tract rather than acoustic/auditory signals. Accordingly, the articulatory similarities and discrepancies between native and non-native sounds determine the perceptual assimilation patterns of non-native sounds. This study…

This study investigates phonological characteristics of Korean monolingual children with phonological disorders (PD), using data from 13 children aged 3.6 to 5.9, and compares the analyses of single-word productions (SW) to those of conversational speech (CS). Phonological analyses include overall percentage of consonants correct (PCC), individual…

Graphotactic as well as phonological factors influence native English speakers' decisions about consonant doubling in the spelling of nonwords, e.g., "zimen" versus "zimmen." This study examined the extent to which such influences apply to non-native speakers of English, who presumably have less knowledge of English…

Listeners selectively tune in to the most relevant cues for contrasting sounds, and this process impacts their perceptual sensitivity to these cues (Nosofsky, 1986; Pisoni, 1991). For bilingual listeners, recent work suggests a shared L1/L2 phonology system with the phonetic properties of each sound established in a language-specific way…

This study examined how Korean EFL learners in different proficiency levels attest contrasts of L2 phonology. To this end, twenty Korean EFL learners in high and low levels of English proficiency produced words with word-final contrasts of /[esh]/ vs. /[esh]i/, /t[esh]/ vs. /t[esh]i/, and /d[ezh]/ vs. /d[ezh]i/. Acoustic analyses of lexical vs.…

This study investigates the acoustic realizations of English phonemic contrasts by Korean EFL learners, comparing their productions with those of native English speakers. Focusing on the segmentally correct production, the research aims to determine if Korean learners' acoustic properties align with those of native speakers, influenced by second…

Given the well-documented consonant primacy established in Roman script, this study examined the role of consonants and vowels in lexical decision of Korean "Hangul" among skilled Korean readers in order to identify whether the salient role of consonants over vowels would be script-universal or script-specific. Three experiments were…

This study examined Korean learners' production of intervocalic English biconsonantal clusters consisting of /p/, /t/, /k/, /m/, /n/, or /[eng] / followed by /l/ or /[voiced alveolar approximant]/. The results of the production experiment showed several factors influencing Korean learners' production. First, Korean learners' production was…

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of phonological information on visual word recognition by using letter transposition effects. The Korean writing system gives a unique opportunity to investigate such phenomenon since the transposition of the beginning consonant (onset) and the end consonant (coda) of a certain syllable allows one…

Pronunciation presents a significant, persistent challenge to second language (L2) learners (Derwing & Munro, 2015; Piske, McKay, & Flege, 2001). Fortunately, pronunciation instruction works (Lee, Jang, & Plonsky, 2015). However, pronunciation receives relatively little attention in language classrooms. Further complicating the matter…

This dissertation examines the development of the internal structure of the Korean syllable by adult Korean learners whose native language is English. Prior research has identified the prominence of the body constituent in Korean and the rime constituent in English. The current study focuses on the acquisition of the body unit by English speakers…