Japanese Speakers' Perception Errors of Korean Lenis, Aspirated, and Fortis Consonants

Kim, Soo Jin; Cho, Hye Suk; Hwang, Yu Mi; Nam, Ki Chun

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 2002;7(1): 166-180.

Soo Jin Kim^` , Hye Suk Cho^` , Yu Mi Hwang^` , and Ki Chun Nam^`

김수진(Soo Jin Kim)| 조혜숙(Hye Suk Cho)| 황유미(Yu Mi Hwang)| 남기춘(Ki Chun Nam)

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this research was to investigate how Japanese speaker s perceive the three categories of each series of plosives and affricates in Korean: bilabial plosives (/ ㅂ, ㅃ, ㅍ/ ), alveolar plosives (/ ㄷ, ㄸ, ㅌ/ ), velar plosives (/ ㄱ, ㄲ, ㅋ/ ), and alveopalatal affricates (/ ㅈ, ㅉ, ㅊ/ ), the three categories being the representative (/ ㅂ, ㄷ, ㄱ, ㅈ/ ), the aspirated (/ ㅍ, ㅌ, ㅋ, ㅊ/ ), and the tense sounds (/ ㅃ, ㄸ, ㄲ, ㅉ/ ). The two-way distinction of / ㅅ/ (representative) and / ㅆ/ (tense) was also tested. Eight Japanese speakers participated in the experiment. Discrimination and identification tasks were performed. The following result s of the experiments were found: (1) The discrimination between the aspirated and the tense categories scored high. However, there was a significant difficulty in discriminating the representative and other categories. (2) The error analysis of the identification task showed that the participant s perceived the representative sounds / ㄱ, ㄷ, ㅂ, ㅈ/ as the aspirated sounds / ㅋ, ㅌ, ㅍ, ㅊ/ , and both the aspirated / ㅋ, ㅌ, ㅍ, ㅊ/ and the tense / ㄲ, ㄸ, ㅃ, ㅉ/ , as the representative / ㄱ, ㄷ, ㅂ, ㅈ/ sounds. For / ㅅ, ㅆ/ , most participant s perceived the tense sound as the representative sound. An attempt was made to explain the result s in terms of the differences in the physical characteristics between Korean and Japanese plosives and affricates.

Keywords: 말소리 지각 | 외국어학습 | 변별 | 확인 | 지각 오류 | 상관속