Doctoral Dissertation Research: Native-Language and Native-Dialect Effects in Learning to Perceive a Difficult Phonetic Contrast in Korean

当人们学习外语时，经常会有一对难以区分的声音。例如，许多日本英语学习者在听和发“r”和“l”之间的区别方面有困难，因为只有一个日语音与这两个英语音相近。这个项目研究正在学习外语的人如何发展区分难发音的能力。具体来说，它研究了在首尔参加语言强化课程的汉语、日语和英语母语人士是如何学习韩语中两个难发音的“s”之间的区别的。它探讨了这两种韩语发音的线索（不同的物理特征）与不同母语中最相似的声音的线索之间的关系。在这一探索中使用的一个主要方法是一系列的感知实验，这些实验将由韩语学生在他们第一年广泛学习韩语的过程中每隔6个月进行一次。这些实验的结果将进行统计分析，以跟踪不同学习者在不同阶段使用的线索。同样的实验还将用于测试来自三个不同方言地区的母语为韩语的人使用哪些线索，在这些方言地区，这些“s”般的声音的线索是不一样的。这项研究的结果将增加我们对为什么学习第二语言和学习一种新方言如此不同的理解。这将改善韩语、阿拉伯语、汉语等较难语言的第二语言教学方法。

When people learn foreign languages, there are often pairs of sounds that are difficult to differentiate. For example, many Japanese learners of English have difficulty hearing and pronouncing the difference between "r" and "l" because there is only one Japanese sound that is close to both of these English sounds. This project studies how people who are learning a foreign language might develop the ability to differentiate difficult sounds. Specifically, it looks at how native speakers of Chinese, Japanese, and English who are enrolled in intensive language courses in Seoul learn the difference between two difficult "s"-like sounds of Korean. It explores the relationship between the cues (the differentiating physical characteristics) for these two Korean sounds and the cues for the most similar sounds in the different first languages. A primary method used in this exploration is a series of perception experiments that the Korean-language students will do at 6-month intervals over their first year of extensive study of Korean. Results from these experiments will be analyzed statistically to track which cues different learners use at different stages. The same experiments will also be used to test which cues are used by native speakers of Korean from three different dialect areas, where the cues to these "s"-like sounds are not the same. The results of the study will increase our understanding of why learning a second language is so different from learning a new dialect. This should improve second language teaching methods for difficult languages such as Korean, Arabic, and Chinese.