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The Korean Association for the Study of English Language and Linguistics
[ Article ]
Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 24, No. 0, pp.1101-1120
ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print) 2586-7474 (Online)
Print publication date 31 Jan 2024
Received 02 Sep 2024 Revised 23 Sep 2024 Accepted 15 Oct 2024
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.24..202410.1101

Perception of Prosodic Boundaries by Native English Speakers and Korean Learners of English in Public Speech

Suyeon Im
Assistant Professor, Department of English Language and Literature Soongsil University 369 Sangdo-ro, Dongjak-gu Seoul, Korea, Tel: 02) 820-0338 sim@ssu.ac.kr


© 2024 KASELL All rights reserved
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Korean and English have distinct prosodic systems. Due to these differences, Korean learners of English may have difficulty perceiving prosodic boundaries and tones. To this end, the present study investigates the perception of prosodic boundaries by Korean learners of English compared with native English speakers using public speech. As perception can be influenced by the speech style of the speaker, we first examined the production of prosodic boundaries and tones by a native English speaker in the stimulus materials and observed five boundary types (prosodic word, L-, H-, L-L%, and H-H%). Next, we examined the perception of prosodic boundaries in relation to prosodic strength (prosodic word, intermediate phrase, and intonational phrase) and boundary tones (high tone and low tone) by native English speakers and Korean learners of English. The two groups of listeners differed significantly in that Korean learners of English, compared with native English speakers, were more likely to perceive prosodic boundaries for the intonational phrase, especially one conveying a high tone (i.e., H-H%). These results suggest that Korean learners of English may (a) rely on a bottom-up process and (b) transfer L1 prosody to the perception of L2 prosody. This study calls for exposure to various speech styles during L2 prosody acquisition.

Keywords:

prosody, boundary, phrasal tone, English, public speech, L1 transfer, L2 prosody, Korean learners of English

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