A contrastive study of Japanese and Korean stops: production and perception

2019 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 17K02685
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: Akita International University
• Principal Investigator: Byun Hi-Gyung 国際教養大学, 国際教養学部, 准教授 (90468124)
• Project Period (FY): 2017-04-01 – 2020-03-31
• Keywords: 日韓対照 / 産出 / 知覚 / 閉鎖音 / 音声指導 / VOT / 後続母音のfo / 閉鎖区間

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study examines acoustic characteristics and perceptual cues for Japanese and Korean stops and offers new insights into Korean stop consonant teaching to Japanese-speaking learners.
For Korean, following the previous study that dealt with word-initial stops, word-medial stops were analyzed to determine what the acoustic characteristics and perceptual cues for a three-way laryngeal distinction are, and VOT and closure duration were confirmed as the most dominant factors. For Japanese, VOT and post-stop fo were analyzed using data drawn from four regions, and the result showed that post-stop fo differences could explain the voiced-voiceless distinction, but not alone. The acoustic space of VOT and post-stop fo demonstrated a clear distinction between the two categories, while the effect of VOT and post-stop fo on voicing contrast differed from region to region. As for the teaching of Korean stops, a method using pitch differences was proposed and confirmed its effectiveness.

Free Research Field

音声学，社会音声学，日韓対照, 音声教育

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

日韓の語頭閉鎖音はそれぞれ二項対立と三項対立を成し言語学的には大きく異なるが，音響音声学的にはどちらもVOTと後続母音のfoの二つのパラメータで記述することができる。両言語は語頭閉鎖音のVOTに通時的変化が起こっており，その詳細を明らかにすることは言語学への貢献はもちろん，それぞれの言語の学習者に対する音声教育にも役立つものと考える。