Gender and Correction Effects for Koreans’ Production of the English Voiced Alveopalatal Fricative

Abstract

This study explores Koreans’ production of the English alveopalatal fricative, which is not found in the Korean phonemic inventory and hence known to be a difficult sound to pronounce. Both Korean male and female college students produced the English /ʒ/ before and after the correction by an English professor. Some acoustical properties were analyzed including frication noise durations and spectral peak locations as well as spectral moments such as center of gravity, dispersion, skewness, and kurtosis. Statistical results showed that gender effects were found in all of the acoustical properties, and correction effects were found in frication noise durations, spectral peak locations, dispersion, and kurtosis. The center of gravity and skewness appeared to be changed after correction. However, they were not significantly different. The interactions of the two effects were not found in all of the acoustical properties. Some researchers reported that Korean did not have alveopalatal consonants and hence Korean consonants like /ʧ/ were pronounced with alveolar place of articulation. According to the results from the acoustical properties, the Koreans produced the English /ʒ/ as an alveopalatal fricative, not as an alveolar fricative. Thus the L1 transfer due to the lack of /ʒ/ in the Korean phonemic inventory was not found in the current study.