earticle

영어

Yang, SoYoung. “The Production and Perception of Aspirated and Unaspirated Voiceless Stops in English” Studies in English Language & Literature. 39.1 (2013): 299-314. This study examines the production of English s+stop onsets and the perception of a two-way laryngeal contrast between aspirated and unaspirated stops by advanced Korean learners of English to investigate the role of the learners’ L1 knowledge and universal principles in the L2 phonetic acquisition of voiceless stops. To analyze the learners’ interlanguage, I employ Eckman’s Structural Conformity Hypothesis (SCH) which predicts that primary language universals influence the structuring of interlanguage phonology. Three male and three female Korean learners of English participated in the study, and data was obtained through three tasks: reading sentences, describing pictures and discriminating sounds. A one-way ANOVA and a t-test were used to investigate for VOT differences among language groups, including the subjects of this study. The results of the study show that the subjects’ comprehension of English allophones relies on the phonemic distinctions of L1 voiceless stops and a universal unmarked feature of aspirated stops. This finding supports the SCH. (Kwangju Women’s University)