L1 Transfer in Perception of English Stops by Korean Female Teenagers

Abstract

This study aims at exploring how Korean female high school students perceive English stops. Recently Korean stops have undergone changes. The VOTs of lenis and aspirated stops have been overlapped and hence f0 has been a perceptual cue to distinguish them. In previous studies, f0 was also used as a perceptual cue in Korean speakers’ identification of English stops although it has little effect on English speakers’ identification of them. The Korean speakers relied on both VOT and f0 as they did for Korean stops. But which of them is a primary cue has been debated. Based on the perception experiment by Korean female teenagers prepared for this study, the VOT was proven to be a primary cue and the f0 to be a secondary cue. The different results between the current study and previous studies will be discussed.