| When they, the non-native speakers of Korean, learn the language, many of them are capable to communicate and use it fluently in spoken and written form without any barricade. However, those people are easily to be recognized as foreigners when they converse with Korean native speakers, which results from the fact that most of the non-native speakers fail to pronounce as the native speakers do or that non-native speakers’pronunciation is less natural than the natives’.The situation mentioned hereinbefore was defined by Ladefoged in A Course in Phonetics(1993) as foreign accent and categorized into three types:1. Unable to apply properly phonetic weakening, loss of sound, compression, liaison et al.2. Unable to pronounce rhythmically in accordance to the changes of stress.3. Unable to apply properly the linguistics phenomenon- Post-lexical Phonology.Up to present, the researches and studies on the pronunciation of Chinese Korean learners have been concentrated mainly on the first type mentioned in the preceding text, which were the mispronunciation and correction of some bowls and consonants. As a matter of fact, however, it is not sufficient to pronounce adhering to the dictionaries-the lexical phonology level if foreigners wish to pronounce as natural as the native speakers. They must consider the external factors such as stress, intonation and pause under the context. In addition, they must apply properly the phonic rules of the post-lexical phonology.This paper will focus on the epenthesis of the last phoneme, which can be categorized into the manifestation of post-lexical phonology. The epenthesis of the last phoneme refers to the phenomenon that in Korean, when two syllables are pronounced continuously, if the consonant in between two vowels is a fortis or an aspirated sound, then an unreleased stop will be added at the last phoneme of the preceding syllable. This post-lexical phonology is not elaborated in official dictionaries or in phonics rules, but it prevails in daily communication. However, so for the researches on this kind of phenomenon of post-lexical phonology is relatively immature. Therefore this paper centering on the epenthesis of the last phoneme which to some extent is yet to be studied is a new attempt.The experimental phonetics is used to have a comprehensive study on fortis and aspirated sounds’pronunciation of Korean native speakers and the Chinese Korean learners when using the V-CV syllable structures. There are in total 8 experimental subjects, among which there are 4 Korean native speakers,2 males and 2 females; 4 Chinese Korean learners,2 males and 2 females, ranging from 20-30 in age. The four Korean native speakers were born and bred in Seoul who can speak Standard Korean smoothly. The Chinese Korean learners were born in the mainland China and brought up in Chinese environment who regard Korean as a second language and master it deftly. The first step in this experimental phonics is to select 25 words in V-CV syllable structure with fortis and aspirated sounds as the middle consonant; the second step is to select 18 words including syllable structure of V-CV in similar alphanumeric combination and VC-CV structure. Next is to record the 8 subjects’ pronunciation of these 43 words. In order to ensure the accuracy, each words is pronounced twice and thus 668 voice resources among which only 662 can be used as materials for this research.This paper used the phonetics analysis software-WaveSurfer to process the 662 voice resources, testing the time span of each vowels, consonants, as well as the span of the air stream blocking stage of consonants, the span of VOT, the span of the stage of air friction etc, all of which are taken as the bases of analyzing pronouncing characteristics. The process of experimental phonetics is as follows:1. targeting at the V-CV structure to research on the pronunciation of fortis and aspirated sounds in between vowels through the comparison of native speakers and Chinese learners; 2. targeting at the pronunciation of V-CV and VC-CV syllable structures to research whether the native speakers and Chinese learners can distinguish and discern between these two structures.Based on the data from the experimental phonetics, this paper carries a specific analyses and discussion about the pronouncing characteristics of the Korean native speakers and Chinese Korean learners. First of all, the fortis and aspirated sounds in between vowels are categorized into plosives, affricates and fricatives in the paper, which is followed by the data analyses of the voice resources of the subjects to conclude their pronouncing characteristics respectively. The characteristics manifested by the Korean native speakers in V-CV syllable structure are that there would be epenthesis of the last phoneme when the consonant in between vowels is fortis or an aspirated sound. In this case, an unreleased stop occurs at the same pronouncing position with the fortis or aspirated sounds after the vowels of the preceding syllables which means that it changes into VC-CV syllable structure. The experiment thereafter presents that Korean native speakers don’t distinguish between V-CV structure and VC-CV structure when pronouncing if the consonant in between vowels is fortis or an aspirated sound and the time span of the vowel as well as the consonant is similar within the two structures. While as for the Chinese Korean learners, their characteristics are that no such phenomenon of epenthesis of the last phoneme occurs in V-CV syllable structure when the consonant in between vowels is fortis or an aspirated sound, which means that it is still a V-CV syllable structure. It is worth noticing that Chinese Korean learners will be influenced by the writing structure:when it is a VC-V structure, they will pronounce the consonant at the end of the first syllable unconsciously as the last phoneme even if in accordance to liaison rule it should be pronounced as V-CV structure. On the whole, nevertheless, natural epenthesis of the last phoneme will not emerge when Chinese Korean learners make a pronunciation. Accordingly, the voices resources also manifests that when the consonant in between vowels is fortis or an aspirated sound, Chinese Korean learners tend to discern between V-CV syllable structure and VC-CV syllable structure.Facilitated by phonetics theories, this paper analyses reasons of the different characteristics shown by the experimental subjects, which is based on the voice resources from the phonetic experiment. As for the native speakers, the phenomenon of epenthesis of the last phoneme occurs in V-CV syllable structures when the consonant is fortis or an aspirated sound. At this time, an unreleased stop rises up after the vowel of the preceding syllable. The reasons accounting for that are illustrated in this paper as follows:1) the influence of tonicity of fortis and aspirated sounds; 2) the influence of language economy theory. The distinctive feature of fortis and aspirated sounds in Korean is the tonicity of articulating position. When non-tonicity vowels are linked with high-tonicity fortis or aspirated sounds, the native speakers will insert a middle sound naturally for the sake of a convenient and effortless articulation. Consequently, an unreleased stop is added at the last phoneme of the preceding syllable. As for the Chinese Korean learners, the epenthesis of the last phoneme will not appear when the consonant is an aspirated sound or fortis in V-CV syllable structures, which differs widely with the native speakers. The paper also analyses the reasons for such phenomenon from the following two aspects:1) the influence of phonetics teaching in the Korean language learning process; 2) the native speakers’pronunciation habits. When the Korean language learners learn phonetics at the beginning, they are taught the pronunciation of every phoneme which is applied into the pronunciation of all words and sentences. However, there is no description of post-lexical phonology in their phonetics course books, which is the critical reason for the mispronunciation of Chinese Korean learners. Moreover, there is no opposition of tonicity in Chinese consonants system. Besides in Chinese, the consonants similar to fortis and aspirated sounds are in the same syllable structures so no epenthesis of the last phoneme will occur, which explains why Chinese learners don’t form the habit of adding a middle sound naturally. Finally, the reasons for such differences also elucidated from the perspectives hereinafter:1) the syllable differences between Korean and Chinese; 2) the pronunciation habits differences between Korean and Chinese. Korean is a language with flexible syllable structures, complex phonic rules as well as changeable consonants; while Chinese is relatively stable in syllable structures without changes in consonants, whose phonic rules are caused by the change of tone and intonation. Those are the major reasons for the differences of pronunciation between the Korean native speakers and the Chinese Korean learners.Except for the phonetics phenomena depicted in the official grammar books, the researches on the post-lexical phonology of pronunciation in practices are of much significance as well, which serves as an indispensable part for improving the phonetics rules of Korean and the researches on it. The epenthesis of the last phoneme discussed in the paper belongs to the post-lexical phonology. It is believed that this paper will make certain contribution to the researches on the intrinsic properties of Korean vowels and consonants. In addition, the findings and conclusions of the paper will be used as auxiliary references for the study of Korean phonetics teaching, assisting people including Chinese and other foreigners to master a more natural and smooth phonological skills. |
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