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| Interlanguage Phonology of Korean Learners of English |
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While Korean has three distinctive voiceless stops as phonemes, English has two distinctive stops: voiceless stops /p, t, k/ and voiced stops /b, d, g/. Voiceless stops are aspirated in the word initial or in the stressed-syllable initial position, but they are not aspirated after /s/ and in the unstressed-syllable initial position, and they remain unexploded in the syllable coda position. The following show the Korean and English stop phonemes and allophones. The most similar sounds are linked together. [Note: English unaspirated voiceless stops sound more similar to Korean fortis stops rather than lenis stops. ]
(1) |
Korean and English Stop Phonemes and Allophones |
Koreans tend to substitute Korean /p
,
t,
k/
for English /p, t, k/, and Korean /p, t, k/ for English /b, d, g/, which
causes a devoicing problem in the word initial or word final position. [Note: Actually, the result of Major & Faudree (1996) shows that
the voiced stops in the word initial position are not a big problem to Korean
learners of English. They conclude that the subjects overcame the difficulty
of voicing in the word initial position. However, according to Ladefoged
(1993), native listeners of English differentiate a voiceless stop and a
voiced stop in the word initial position by the presence of aspiration not by
the presence of voicing, and also those in the word final position by the
duration of preceding vowels not by the presence of voicing, since English
stops in those positions are partially devoiced. Thus, the Korean speakers do
not seem to have problems in differentiating voiceless stops (= aspirated
ones) and voiced stops (= unaspirated lenis ones) in the word initial
position. However, many Korean learners of English do not know that the vowel
duration is longer before a voiced consonant than before a corresponding
voiceless consonant. This must have lead to much poorer result in the
production of word final voiced stops in Major & Faudree's (1996)
experiment. ] The following are consonant substitutions (H-B Park,
1992:59) and vowel substitutions made by Korean speakers:
| (2) | a. Consonat Substitutions
b. Vowel Substitutions |
Not only the phoneme inventories but also the syllable structures of
English and Korean are quite different from each other. The Korean syllable
structure is much simpler than that of English: V, CV or CVC. It does not
allow consonant clusters, [Note: There is some debate about
the treatment of glide in the Korean syllable structure. It has usually been
regarded as part of a vowel (C-W Kim & H-Y Kim, 1991) owing to the
orthography, but recently there is another claim that it may not part of a
vowel but an onset element (YS Lee, 1983). If such a claim is admitted, we may
say Korean allows a consonant cluster only in the form of "C + G" in the
syllable onset position. However, because this issue is beyond the scope of
the present study, it will not be considered further here.] and the
syllable coda position is restricted to only lenis stops /p, t, k/, nasals /m,
n, 
/ and a lateral /l/.
Broselow (1987:272) proposes the following Syllable Structure Transfer Hypothesis:
| (3) | Syllable Structure Transfer Hypothesis When the target language permits syllable structures which are not permitted in the native language, learners will make errors which involve altering these structures to those which would be permitted in the native language. |
Korean speakers learning English seem to support this hypothesis. Inserting
a vowel, they try to break consonant clusters. They also insert a vowel after
a fricative or an affricate sound, since fricatives or affricates in the
syllable coda position, without vowel insertion, would be neutralized as /t/
under the application of SFNR (1). That is, bus might be homophonous with but.
Due to the epenthesis, the original syllable-final fricative or affricate is
resyllabified as a syllable-initial one, and can be realized as a more similar
sound to the target language (Nam & Southard, 1994:267). A high front
vowel /i/ is inserted after a palatal sound such as /
, 
, 
, 
/ and a high back unrounded vowel /
/ is
inserted elsewhere (Ahn, 1991:15; Tak, 1996:768, 775). The following are some
examples of vowel insertion by Korean speakers:
(4) a. Christmas --> [kIn (4b), /r/ in the coda position is deleted, since Korean syllable system does not allow /r/ in this position, and instead its preceding vowel is compensatorily lengthened. [This is by chance similar to British English. However, usually, Korean speakers are not taught British English pronunciation at school. If /r/ is not deleted, it may be neutralized as /l/ by Korean speakers, which must lead to a more undesirable result.]:
On the other hand, H-B Park (1992) insists that Korean speakers insert //
after a stop, if its preceding vowel is a tense/long vowel or a diphthong,
giving the following examples: (5) a. [pHowever, as shown in the variants [k
eik]
and [keik] for
cake, or in the variants [taip]
and [taip] for
type, vowel insertion may not apply even after a diphthong. K-J Lee
(1992) has the similar idea to H-B Park (1992). Exemplifying that dog
has two different variants [tok] and [to:g] but
guide or league are always realized as [kaid] and
[li:g],
she insists that an English syllable-final voiced stop is epenthesized when
following a long vowel or a diphthong, and that it is unreleased when
following a short vowel. In fact, a syllable-final voiced stop tends to be
epenthesized quite easily, even if it is preceded by a short/lax vowel as
shown in [k
g] for
gag. This is because the devoiced stop sound by substituting Korean /k/
for English /g/ can be voiced again by Lenis
Stop Voicing Rule through vowel insertion. It would be interesting to
investigate which strategy (devoicing but keeping the syllable structure, or
preserving voicing but adding a syllable through vowel insertion) Korean
speakers use more often in such a situation and which is better on the
viewpoint of intelligibility by native speakers of English. To sum up, the
vowel insertion rules can be formulated as follows:
| (6) | Vowel Insertion Rules |
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| a. In the case of a consonant cluster in the syllable onset
position
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| b. In the case of a consonant cluster in the syllable coda position |
| b-1 | If the first consonant following the vowel is permissible in the
coda position
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| b-2 | If the first consonant following the vowel is not
permissible
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| c. | In the case of a consonant in the syllable coda position |
| c-1. | If a non-sonorant consonant is preceded by a long vowel or a
diphthong
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| c-2. | If the consonant is not permissible in the syllable coda
position
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5. Transfer of LSVR (Lenis Stop Voicing Rule)
The transfer of LSVR
results in voicing a voiceless stop in an intervocalic position. Not a few
Korean learners of English tend to mispronounce stop it as [st
abit],
or check up as [egp].
Their derivations can be displayed as follows:
| (7) | 
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6. Transfer of Nasalization (NasR)
The transfer of NasR seems to be more serious. Many Koreans pronounce pop
music as [pam
mjuik], and nickname as [ni neim] (Nam & Southard, 1994).
7. Transfer of /n/-Insertion Rule
A pronunciation of Look at yourself can be described as follows:
| (8) | 
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In conclusion, Korean learners of English tend to transfer Korean phonological rules such as SFNR, LSVR, NasR, etc. to English. They also use vowel insertion to admit permissible syllable structures. The degree of transfer consistency of these rules may be different from each other. That is, those who transfer LSVR also seem to transfer NasR, but those who do not transfer NasR do not seem to transfer LSVR. In order to elucidate such a postulation, more empirical research is required. Such a difference would be a good tool for judging the development degree of an L2 learner's acquisition of L2 phonology or the degree of his or her fossilization in L2 pronunciation.
