30 / 2021-05-12 13:56:00

参加优秀论文奖评选（ 胡心）-Korean EFL Learners' Superasegmental Features

segmental feature, suprasegmental feature, syllable, stress, rhythm, foot, linking

Content overview and innovative features of this thesis:



In most Asian countries, how the ESL learners overcome the interferential difficulties of their native languages in English pronunciation learning for achieving the similar pronunciation with English native speakers, which has been considered as the hot topic with much attention in the international ESL academic research. While the key factor of the problem is that the English academic researchers have limited and direct data to make a comparative analysis on suprasegmental visual spectrum and waveforms features of English pronunciation between NNS and NS. Given that the innovative point of this thesis is fully demonstrated, which choose Korean students as the representative NNS participants, as well as observe the differences on the three most fundamental elements of English pronunciation, syllables, stress and rhythm, between NNS and NS. Making efficiently use of the comparative analysis data of suprasegmental visual spectrum and waveform in English pronunciation to assist Korean students to get rid of their own native language interference of learning English pronunciation, More than ever, which effectively help them output the same pronunciation as what the native speakers speak. This thesis will play a forward-looking and enlightening role for the students who are from other non-native English-speaking countries such as China, Japan and Thailand in the research study of English pronunciation, meanwhile, has a historical significance of laying a milestone for the future researchers in the English phonetics field.



ABSTRACT



This thesis delves into some aspects of suprasegmental features such as syllable structure, stress, and rhythm and compares them between NS and NNS. First of all, syllable structure in English consists of Onset and Rhyme, which is further composed of Nucleus and Coda. The onset and the coda in English syllable structure are characterized to have a maximum of 3 and 4 consonant clusters, respectively. In contrast, Korean allows only 1 single consonant in onset and coda position. This cross-linguistic difference gives rise to the insertion of the neutral vowel /ɨ/ to break up the consonant clusters in English words, which is visualized in spectrograms and sound waveforms, in which the inserted vowel forms an independent wave chunk.

Second, Korean lacks stress placed at the level of the word. It follows that Korean EFL learners tend to put an approximately equal prominence on every syllable in a word. They also exhibit a tendency to put a strong prominence particularly on the first syllable of a word with more than 2 syllables, which is dubbed an 'initial prominence phenomenon' in this thesis. The NNS’s performance of stress is clearly displayed in spectrograms and waveforms, in which each syllable is represented as an equal wave chunk in size and thickness.

Finally, English is said to have a stress-timed rhythm, and Korean a syllable-timed rhythm. The stress-timed rhythm is established when stressed and unstressed syllables occur in relatively regular alternating patterns in sentences, in which the two types of syllables are combined to form a 'foot'. In the syllable-timed rhythm, on the other hand, the two types of syllables each form an independent foot due to the lack of stress, consequently increasing the number of feet and accordingly the timing of a whole sentence. The timing of the two distinct rhythms is calculated and displayed in terms of seconds. Given that suprasegmental features play a more important role than segmental ones, this thesis finds its significance in exhibiting these features in visualization between NS and NNS.



KEY WORDS: segmental feature, suprasegmental feature, syllable, stress,

rhythm, foot, linking