Acquisition of prosodic phrasing and edge tones by Korean learners of English

Wook Kyung Choe 한국음성학회 2016 말소리와 음성과학 Vol.8 No.4

The purpose of the current study was to examine the acquisition of the second language prosody by Korean learners of English. Specifically, this study investigated Korean learners" patterns of prosodic phrasing and their use of edge tones (i.e., phrase accents and boundary tones) in English, and then compared the patterns with those of native English speakers. Eight Korean learners and 8 native speakers of English read 5 different English passages. Both groups’ patterns of tones and prosodic phrasing were analyzed using the Mainstream American English Tones and Break Indices (MAE_ToBI) transcription conventions. The results indicated that the Korean learners chunked their speech into prosodic phrases more frequently than the native speakers did. This frequent prosodic phrasing pattern was especially noticeable in sentence-internal prosodic phrases, often where there was no punctuation mark. Tonal analyses revealed that the Korean learners put significantly more High phrase accents (H-) on their sentence-internal intermediate phrase boundaries than the native speakers of English. In addition, compared with the native speakers, the Korean learners used significantly more High boundary tones (both H-H% and L-H%) for the sentence-internal intonational phrases, while they used similar proportion of High boundary tones for the sentence-final intonational phrases. Overall, the results suggested that Korean learners of English successfully acquired the meanings and functions of prosodic phrasing and edge tones in English as well as that they are able to efficiently use these prosodic features to convey their own discourse intention.

The Effect of Interpretation Bias on the Production of Disambiguating Prosody

Choe, Wook Kyung,Redford, Melissa A. 한국음성학회 2015 말소리와 음성과학 Vol.7 No.3

Previous research on syntactic processing shows that the interpretation of a syntactically ambiguous sentence is frequently strongly biased towards one meaning over another. The current study investigated the effect of bias strength on the production of disambiguating prosody for English ambiguous sentences. In Experiment 1, 40 speakers gave default readings of 18 syntactically ambiguous sentences. Questioning was used to prove intended meanings behind default readings. Intended meanings were treated as interpretation biases when a majority of speakers read a sentence with the same intended meaning. The size of the majority was used to establish bias strength. In Experiment 2, 10 speakers were instructed to use prosody to disambiguate given alternate meanings of the sentences from Experiment 1. The results indicated an effect of bias strength on disambiguating prosody: speakers used temporal juncture cues to reliably disambiguate alternate meanings for sentences with a weak interpretation bias, but not for those with a strong bias. Overall, the results indicated that interpretation biases strongly affect the production of prosody.

The realization of English rhythm by Busan Korean speakers

Wook Kyung Choe 한국음성학회 2019 말소리와 음성과학 Vol.11 No.4

The purpose of the current study is to investigate the realization of speech rhythm in English as spoken by Korean learners of English. The study particularly aims to examine the rhythm metrics of English read speech by learners who speak Busan or the South Kyungsang dialect of Korean. Twenty-four learners whose L1 is Busan Korean and eight native speakers of English read a passage wherein five sentences were segmented and labeled as vocalic and intervocalic intervals. Various rhythm metrics such as %V, Varcos, and Pairwise Variability Indexes (PVIs) were calculated. The results show that Korean learners read English sentences with significantly more vocalic and consonantal intervals at a slower speech rate than native English speakers. The analyses of rhythm metrics revealed that when the speech rate was not normalized, Korean learners’ English showed more variability in the length of consonantal and vocalic intervals. However, speech-rate-normalized rhythm metrics for vocalic intervals indicated that Korean learners transferred their L1 rhythmic structures (a syllable-timed language) into their L2 speech (a stress-timed language). Overall, the results suggest that Korean learners’ English reflects the rhythmic characteristics of their L1. The effect of the learners’ L1 dialect on the realization of L2 speech rhythm is also speculated.

Prosodic Disambiguation by Elementary School-aged Children

Choe, Wook Kyung(최욱경) 새한영어영문학회 2023 새한영어영문학 Vol.65 No.2

The purpose of the current study was to explore whether elementary school-aged English-speaking children could use prosodic information to disambiguate syntactically ambiguous sentences. Considering that one of the two possible meanings for an ambiguous sentence is preferred over another, the current study also investigated the effect of interpretation biases on the use of disambiguating prosody by school-aged children. Fifty-seven children aged at between 6 and 9 years as well as twenty-four adults were asked to answer the pre-determined disambiguating questions after listening to the untrained speakers’ production of disambiguating prosody. The results showed that the children were not able to successfully interpret the speakers’ intended meanings using prosodic cues. Especially, when the intended meanings were less-preferred, the children had difficulties in interpreting the meanings based on the given prosodic cues. Overall, the results suggested that the elementary school-aged children depended more on their own interpretation biases than on the provided prosodic information to disambiguate syntactically ambiguous sentences.

The acquisition of boundary tones in spontaneous speech by Korean learners of English

Wook Kyung Choe 한국음성학회 2020 말소리와 음성과학 Vol.12 No.4

The current study was designed to investigate which type of phrase boundary tones high-intermediate Korean learners of English used in their spontaneous speech. These boundary tones were compared to those used in native speakers’ spontaneous speech to examine whether the learners successfully acquired the use of boundary tones. To achieve this purpose, 10 Korean learners of English and four native speakers of English participated in the current study. The participants were asked to summarize the stories of short videos, and the tonal and the phrasing patterns of the obtained spontaneous speech were analyzed using Tone and Break Indices (ToBI) transcription conventions. The results indicated that both the native speakers and the Korean learners frequently marked their intonational phrase boundaries with high boundary tones. However, regarding the prosodic phrase positions within a sentence, Korean learners frequently used steep rising tones (i.e., H-H%) while native speakers used gradual rising tones (i.e., L-H%) for sentence-final intonational phrases. Overall, the findings suggested that high-intermediate Korean learners understood the forward-looking function of the high boundary tones and that they were able to make use of these tones to mark intonational phrases in their spontaneous speech.

Linguistic and social factors affecting the /ɨ/ and /ʌ/ dispersion in Kyungsang Korean

Wook Kyung Choe,Dongmyung Lee 한국음성학회 2017 말소리와 음성과학 Vol.9 No.4

The current study investigated the productions of /ɨ/ and /ʌ/ in Kyungsang Korean, which is known for undergoing a dispersion for the younger generation. Specifically, to identify the nature of /ɨ/ and /ʌ/ in Kyungsang Korean, this study examined the linguistic and social factors affecting directions and degrees of the /ɨ/-/ʌ/ dispersion. Sixteen young speakers of Kyungsang Korean repeated 112 (near) minimal pairs containing the two target vowels. The formant values of each production as well as the Euclidean distance between the two vowels were analyzed for four manipulated factors: gender (male vs. female), the existence of carrier phrases (words in isolation vs. words with a carrier phrase), the lexical status of stimulus words (real-word pairs vs. nonsense-word pairs), and the vowel position within a word (word-initial positions vs. word-final positions). The results indicated that the female speakers produced the two target vowels more distinctively than the male speakers, and so did when the words were produced in isolation. The results also revealed that the Euclidean distances were greater for the real-word pairs and in word-initial positions. Overall, the results suggested that the Kyungsang Korean speakers in their 20s could distinctively produce the two vowels /ɨ/ and /ʌ/, but this vowel dispersion is not a completed process, but an ongoing one.

The effect of interpretation bias on the comprehension of disambiguating prosody

Wook Kyung Choe 한국음운론학회 2015 음성·음운·형태론 연구 Vol.21 No.3

Although interpretation biases are not frequently assumed in studies of prosodic disambiguation, research on syntactic processing indicates that the two possible meanings of a syntactically ambiguous sentence are not equally plausible. The goal of the current study is to investigate the effect of interpretation bias (which of the two meanings is preferred) and bias strength (how strongly one meaning is preferred to another) on the comprehension of disambiguating prosody. Thirty-two listeners were asked to identify a speaker's intended meaning using disambiguating prosodic cues, which were produced by multiple untrained speakers. The results showed an effect of bias strength on the listeners' performance on prosodic disambiguation: listeners more successfully identified the intended meaning for strongly-biased sentences than the intended meaning for weakly-biased sentences. The results from further analyses also revealed that listeners' strategies to disambiguate an ambiguous sentence using prosody varied depending on its bias strength.

An Acoustic Study on the Production of /o/ and /u/ in South Kyungsang Korean

Wook Kyung Choe,Dongmyung Lee 한국언어과학회 2019 언어과학 Vol.26 No.2

Marked Suppression of Ghrelin Concentration by Insulin in Prader-Willi Syndrome

Paik, Kyung-Hoon,Lee, Moon-Kyu,Jin, Dong-Kyu,Kang, Hahn Wook,Lee, Kyung Han,Kim, An Hee,Kim, Cheol,Lee, Ji Eun,Oh, Yoo Joung,Kim, Seonwoo,Han, Sun Joo,Kwon, Eun Kyung,Choe, Yon Ho KOREAN ACADEMY OF MEDICAL SCIENCE 2007 JOURNAL OF KOREAN MEDICAL SCIENCE Vol.22 No.2

<P>The plasma ghrelin has been reported to be elevated in Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) and modulated by insulin. It was hypothesized that insulin might have a more pronounced effect on reducing plasma ghrelin in PWS patients, which would influence appetite. This study investigated the degree of ghrelin suppression using an euglycemic hyperinsulinemic clamp in children with PWS (n=6) and normal children (n=6). After a 90-min infusion of insulin, the plasma ghrelin level decreased from a basal value of 0.86±0.15 to 0.58±0.12 ng/mL in the controls, and from 2.38±0.76 to 1.12±0.29 ng/mL in children with PWS (<I>p</I>=0.011). The area under the curve below the baseline level over the 90 min insulin infusion was larger in children with PWS than in controls (-92.82±44.4 vs. -10.41±2.87 ng/mL/90 min) (<I>p</I>=0.011). The insulin sensitivity measured as the glucose infusion rate at steady state was similar in the two groups (<I>p</I>=0.088). The decrease in the ghrelin levels in response to insulin was more pronounced in the children with PWS than in the controls. However, the level of ghrelin was always higher in the children with PWS during the clamp study. This suggests that even though insulin sensitivity to ghrelin is well maintained, an increase in the baseline ghrelin levels is characteristic of PWS.</P>

eIF4AIII enhances translation of nuclear cap-binding complex–bound mRNAs by promoting disruption of secondary structures in 5′UTR

Choe, Junho,Ryu, Incheol,Park, Ok Hyun,Park, Joori,Cho, Hana,Yoo, Jin Seon,Chi, Sung Wook,Kim, Min Kyung,Song, Hyun Kyu,Kim, Yoon Ki National Academy of Sciences 2014 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF Vol.111 No.43

<P>It has long been considered that intron-containing (spliced) mRNAs are translationally more active than intronless mRNAs (identical mRNA not produced by splicing). The splicing-dependent translational enhancement is mediated, in part, by the exon junction complex (EJC). Nonetheless, the molecular mechanism by which each EJC component contributes to the translational enhancement remains unclear. Here, we demonstrate the previously unappreciated role of eukaryotic translation initiation factor 4AIII (eIF4AIII), a component of EJC, in the translation of mRNAs bound by the nuclear cap-binding complex (CBC), a heterodimer of cap-binding protein 80 (CBP80) and CBP20. eIF4AIII is recruited to the 5'-end of mRNAs bound by the CBC by direct interaction with the CBC-dependent translation initiation factor (CTIF); this recruitment of eIF4AIII is independent of the presence of introns (deposited EJCs after splicing). Polysome fractionation, tethering experiments, and in vitro reconstitution experiments using recombinant proteins show that eIF4AIII promotes efficient unwinding of secondary structures in 5'UTR, and consequently enhances CBC-dependent translation in vivo and in vitro. Therefore, our data provide evidence that eIF4AIII is a specific translation initiation factor for CBC-dependent translation.</P>